Information for In Committee news reports are sourced from GoldenDomeVt.com and the General Assembly website.
Should Vermont tax dollars be used to quell civil unrest in Burlington? During discussion of the Senate Committee on Appropriations on Tuesday, Senate Pro Tempore, Philip Baruth (D/P-Chittenden Central) proposed policy language to expand H.790 to allow the allocation of up to around $39 million of taxpayer funds to reimburse anticipated public safety costs in some of Vermont’s most populous municipalities in the event of increased federal immigration enforcement operations.
“…Or in the event the state or its municipalities incur public safety costs necessitated by the deployment of federal agents within the state”, said the pro tem, reading off a piece of paper. The Senator did not propose any caps on the amount that could be allocated but also did not indicate that these public safety costs would reach this figure.
The original $50 million has been eroded somewhat since being approved by the legislature in 2025 when the legislature foresaw the need to backfill losses in funding from the Trump administration, e.g medicaid funding. The money, as it currently stands in law, is to be used to address reductions in federal funding only when the legislature isn’t in session but the Senator’s proposed language would also allow the funds to be used for the broader purposes of “public safety costs”. While Baruth references policing, the language he proposed does not limit its use to policing.
His comments were made following conversations with the cities of Burlington and Winooski, describing them as, “places where we might reasonably expect federal agents to show up, given what we’ve seen around the country.” This is at least the second time this session that Senator Baruth has expressed his suspicions about what actions the federal government will take based on what he has seen, “around the country”.
However, the pro tem’s desire to be proactive about public safety may be accurate as anti-ICE protests have cropped up across the country in the wake of the death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. This includes Vermont as seen this past Friday when massive crowds appeared in Burlington. In the case of Minneapolis, protests have turned violent and tensions in the state have resulted in confrontations between federal immigration agents and protestors. Some reports allege that roadblock and checkpoints are being set up across the city to impede ICE agents and track their movements.
In an official release, Burlington Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak indicates that her office is “planning ahead to ensure we can continue supporting residents”, in the event of increased ICE operations in the city. Mulvaney-Stanak also urged residents to report ICE activity via “ ICE Tracker”, a tip line created by the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project and Migrant Justice.
No estimates have been released of the costs associated with increased policing or other public safety measures, or whether the city can accommodate the training and hiring of additional officers in a reduced timeframe.