While disagreement abounded at the Burlington City Council meeting this week, Mayor Miro Weinberger and councilors seemed to reach consensus on at least one issue: The city should change its charter to give citizens broader oversight in cases of potential police misconduct.
Still, city leaders have struggled to put a proposed charter amendment before voters, who would need to authorize the change. And while councilors gave initial approval Monday night to a bipartisan resolution that would set the process in motion, there’s still a lot of time for things to go bust.
The disagreement hangs on whether a board that is independent of the police department should be solely responsible for disciplining police officers and whether the existing Burlington Police Commission is separate enough from the department to serve that purpose.
Currently, the police commission reviews misconduct complaints and makes recommendations to the police chief on whether action is necessary but cannot enforce that recommendation.
Multiple councilors and the mayor spoke Monday night about the need for a system with “checks and balances,” extending accountability for misconduct beyond the department itself. But councilors are still divided on what role the police chief should play in matters of police discipline, if any at all.
A Progressive-led effort to form a citizen board with control of police oversight passed the council on a 7-5 vote last year, but Weinberger vetoed the proposed charter amendment before it could hit the ballot.
Seeking common ground
Now, some Progressives and Democrats are trying to find common ground. The resolution that councilors voted on Monday night — which was sponsored by Councilors Karen Paul, D-Ward 6; Zoraya Hightower, P-Ward 1; and Jane Stromberg, P-Ward 8 — involves more checks and balances but still gives the police chief some power in the process.
Rather than giving investigative and disciplinary powers to a new, citizen-comprised board, the resolution proposes enacting an ordinance to give the police commission new powers, including:
- Reviewing all complaints of misconduct received by the department.
- Classifying all complaints of misconduct as low-, mid- or high-level (which is meant to prevent the department from burying a complaint as low-level to avoid scrutiny).
- Investigating a misconduct complaint independent of the department’s own investigation.
- Hiring an investigator or attorney to help with its investigation.
After the commission reviews a complaint, the resolution states, it could then recommend to the department if or how an officer should be disciplined. The chief would be required to hear the commission out, and — if the chief disagreed with the commission’s opinion — issue a memo explaining that stance.
In cases of disagreement between the chief and the commission, the resolution states that the mayor and the City Council’s Public Safety Committee would listen to both sides and deliver a final verdict on the complaint.
Still, city attorneys have yet to weigh in on whether the proposed ordinance could supplant existing policy or whether an amendment to the city’s charter alone could adjust how misconduct complaints are handled.
For that reason, sponsors included in the resolution that the council’s Charter Change Committee should draft a new charter amendment decreeing that an independent body, and not the police chief, should be responsible for penalizing police misconduct. The committee is first supposed to seek public comment on the issue.
But that idea, introduced during Monday’s meeting, received only a cautious endorsement from Weinberger and the council’s more conservative members, who warned that the resolution’s “imprecise language” could lead to a charter amendment that would give the chief no authority over police discipline.
“I would not support something that removed all discipline authority from the chief,” Weinberger told councilors. “I didn’t read this to say that, so I would support getting it to the Charter Change Committee and discussing it there.”
“I think we can have our interpretations of what it means and debate in the committee to get to the right answer,” the mayor added.
On the other side of the auditorium, some Progressives said they would not be wholly satisfied by the compromise. Still, they said they would support it, since it showed the best chance for getting past Weinberger, and eventually — if approved by voters — the state Legislature.
“I have very little faith in the folks at the state level passing anything close to best practice,” Hightower said, referring to a citizen board governing police discipline. “So I’m excited to pass this resolution and get moving on the oversight we can.”
Still to be decided is whether, in a potential charter amendment, the existing police commission will count as an independent body to arbitrate police misconduct decisions.
Paul, Hightower and Councilor Jack Hanson, P-East District, have all publicly stated that the commission is not independent enough from the department to serve that purpose. But at Monday’s meeting, Councilor Mark Barlow, I-North District, successfully tacked on an amendment leaving open the possibility that the commission could serve as an independent body on police misconduct decisions.
For its part, the police commission told councilors in a memo last year that “it is in fact external to the police department, and reflects the perspective of the community, not the police.”
Progressive Councilors Joe Magee, Ward 3, and Perri Freeman, Central District, did not join in the compromise with their fellow caucus members, saying they would only approve a charter change giving citizens the final call on misconduct cases.
For now, the resolution heads to the Ordinance and Charter Change committees for further discussion. In November, councilors and the mayor likely will vote on a charter amendment that could go to voters in March 2022.
Decriminalizing sex work
Also Monday, councilors voted to strike references to prostitution from city ordinances.
A section of the city’s ordinances formerly governed “keeping houses of prostitution,” but now sets rules for the “use of buildings by disorderly persons.”
Freeman introduced the resolution — which also removes an ordinance that called prostitution “unlawful” — in July, after a March shooting in Atlanta targeted Asian spas that the alleged shooter said he thought were associated with sex work.
The ordinance change passed unanimously. A city attorney at the meeting clarified that state law still prohibits prostitution.
Other council actions
In other council business:
- Councilors approved a $1.775 million budget for infrastructure improvements along Main Street.
- The city allocated $1.3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to the Burlington Electric Department, offsetting some of the revenue the utility lost in fiscal 2022 when it provided power to customers who did not pay their bills. During the pandemic, the utility has not been allowed to cut off service from customers who did not pay their bills.
- Cara Chigazola Tobin, chef and owner of Honey Road Restaurant, was appointed to the Church Street Marketplace Commission. She replaces Jed Davis, who owns multiple restaurants in Burlington under the umbrella of the Farmhouse Group.
- Magee was appointed to the city’s Board of Tax Appeals, replacing Sarah Carpenter, D-Ward 4, who stepped down because of an upcoming eye surgery.
