A bill moving through the Vermont House would reduce the salary that the state pays a county sheriff if that sheriff’s police officer certification is permanently revoked — the latest in a slate of legislative efforts to change how county officers do business.
The legislation, H.585, broadly proposes to adjust which state pension plans certain sheriffs and deputy sheriffs are eligible for. It has been approved by three key House committees and is slated for a vote in the full chamber early next week.
But the bill’s last section has little to do with pensions: It would reduce the salary that the state pays a sheriff by 30% if their certification has been permanently rescinded by the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. (State law also allows sheriffs to take in additional compensation from the contracts that they and their departments negotiate.)
There is only one sheriff at the moment to whom this compensation limit would apply: John Grismore of Franklin County, according to Rep. Mike McCarthy, a St. Albans Democrat who chairs the House Government Operations Committee. McCarthy brought the language to his committee, he said, and its other members later approved the full bill unanimously.
Grismore’s police certification was permanently revoked in December after the criminal justice council found he violated the state’s use-of-force policy by kicking a handcuffed and shackled man in August 2022. He faces an assault charge stemming from that incident, as well as a House inquiry into whether or not he should be impeached.
McCarthy sits on the House panel leading that inquiry, which may have hit a dead end earlier this year, as does Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes, another member of the government operations committee.
McCarthy said in an interview that he thinks a reduced salary is reasonable for a sheriff who is performing fewer duties, typically associated with police, than a certified law enforcement officer can carry out. Grismore now can only serve in an administrative capacity and cannot carry out tasks such as investigating crimes or going out on patrols, officials have said.
State law currently sets the annual base salary for sheriffs at $97,754, or $103,449 for the Chittenden County sheriff.
“If somebody has had their certification revoked, they can’t do the whole job. And why would the (state’s) general fund support them as much as it supports somebody who is certified, and can do all the duties that we expect a sheriff to do?” McCarthy said.
In an interview Friday afternoon, Grismore said the proposal unfairly singles him out from all of the other county sheriffs and amounts to “discrimination.”
“This is just continually perpetuating this harassment narrative,” Grismore said. “As a voting member of Franklin County, I am disgusted that that’s how (McCarthy) and others like him are spending their time.”
H.585 comes as lawmakers have spent well over a year debating proposed reforms to the way county law enforcement officers operate in Vermont, prompted by a series of scandals involving sheriffs in Franklin, Addison, Bennington and other counties.
Just weeks ago, senators failed to advance a proposed constitutional amendment that would have set qualifications and removal procedures for elected county officers amid a lobbying push against it by several of the sheriffs themselves. Impeachment — a political process rather than a judicial one — is currently the state’s only recourse while county residents wait for their quadrennial chance to elect a sheriff.
H.585’s proposed salary reduction is not without some precedent. State law already calls for a 10% reduction in the state’s sheriff compensation if the sheriff has not attained the state’s highest level of police officer certification, which is Level 3.
McCarthy noted that Grismore was already subject to this limit before losing his certification, since he was only a Level 2 officer.
And a fall 2023 report assembled by several law enforcement leaders, including sheriffs, recommended that lawmakers consider enacting “at least” the 30% salary reduction that’s now included in H.585, McCarthy said. The report was commissioned by last year’s Act 30, which created several new accountability measures for sheriffs.
The language wasn’t included in H.585 when it was introduced earlier this year; rather, the government operations committee tacked it on toward the tail-end of its work on the bill.
The Vermont Sheriffs’ Association, an organization representing the profession, hasn’t had enough time yet to form a stance either for or against the proposal, Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux, the association’s vice president, said in an interview Friday.
“We haven’t really had a chance to digest it,” Marcoux said. The sheriffs’ association has called on Grismore to resign his post, though he’s rebuked any such calls.
Marcoux suggested the sheriffs’ association would have opposed earlier language amending H.585 that McCarthy presented earlier to the government operations committee, which called for cutting a decertified sheriff’s annual compensation to just $1.
He pointed to concerns, raised by attorneys from the Office of Legislative Counsel, that a court could find such an extreme limit unconstitutional. That’s because it could make the job financially unsustainable and amount to a de facto removal from office — when the only method for removal in the constitution is impeachment, the attorneys said.
McCarthy said he thinks the 30% limit amounted to a good compromise.
If H.585 clears the House next week, it would then head to the Senate for further consideration.
