Tag Archives: Miro Weinberger

Burlington Backs the Blue… and the Blue

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I don’t know if Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger smokes cigars. But if he does, he may have lit up a celebratory Arturo Fuente Opus X last night after the city election results came in. It may have been his best political day since maybe December 7, 2020, the day that Councilor Ali Dieng launched his bid for mayor. Dieng’s entry opened the way for a split in the anti-Miro vote, giving him an extremely narrow victory over Progressive Max Tracy.

Thus endeth the history lesson. Point is, everything came up Miro last night. His Democratic Party netted one seat to gain a plurality on City Council, and the voters resoundingly defeated the Progressive-backed ballot question on establishing an independent police oversight commission. The new Council will feature six Democrats, four Progressives and two Independents — one of whom, Mark Barlow, won the endorsement of city Dems. If you count Barlow as a Dem vote, Weinberger will have a Council majority behind him for the first time in his 11 years as mayor.

For the Progressives, last night was a disaster. The police board question lost by almost a two-to-one margin, while the party scored a single win against three losses in contested races for Council.

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Now That’s What I Call a Perfectly-Timed Scoop

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Every reporter loves to get a scoop — a story with some impact that you’ve got all to yourself. It’s a badge of honor, to be sure. But more often than not, it doesn’t make much of a difference.

The latest comes from Seven Days‘ Courtney Lamdin, who hit the sweet spot by uncovering a lucrative side hustle negotiated by the Burlington Police Officers Association. It made a deal with a luxury condo development to provide security with off-duty city cops.

Her story may affect the outcome of the hottest issue on the Burlington ballot: A proposed police oversight board that would exclude members of the force from serving. That idea has prompted opposition from Mayor Miro Weinberger and Interim-For-Life Police Chief Jon Murad, among others.

Well, Lamdin’s article makes me think there’s a real need for police oversight, and it would be best done without any officers on the board.

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The Empire Strikes Back?

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Well, that [seemingly] came out of nowhere.

Ted Kenney, an attorney from Williston, told VTDigger he’s thinking about a primary challenge to incumbent Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George.

Under normal circumstances, this could be labeled “quixotic” but without the raffish charm of the original Quixote. Primarying an incumbent in a race that few people pay any attention to?

Why bother?

Well, I think I know why.

I think he thinks there’s a substantial constituency who prefer a more traditional approach to the office instead of George’s pioneering progressivism. And he may well be right, at least in terms of the power brokers and royal families and business-class donors in the county party.

Kenney’s run, if he makes one, is of a piece with Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s consistent pro-police stance — and whatever touched off the departure of Tyeastia Green, the first director of the Burlington Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Department (REIB) and the resignation of three of the REIB’s four managers.

If you’d like details about Weinberger’s law-n-order policies, click on the first link. Mark Hughes of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance runs down the ways that Weinberger — once he was safely re-elected with a plurality of the votes in a race against two progressive challengers — laid down the velvet glove in favor of an iron fist.

And he keeps waving the bloody flag, depicting the Queen City as a lawless wasteland whose handful of police officers dare not walk the streets. If Miro thinks that’s smart politics, is it any wonder that Kenney believes he could beat George by running to her right?

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The Rootin’est, Tootin’est, Six-Shootin’est Mayor Burlington’s Ever Had

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I don’t know exactly what touched it off, but after nine-plus years as Burlington’s mayor, Miro Weinberger has suddenly turned into a gun-totin’ lawman.

His most recent eruption was the Friday afternoon newsdump that tossed Progressive city councilors under the nearest bus. Last Friday, just before the close of business, Weinberger’s office dropped a doozy — announcing that the search for a new police chief would be suspended until the Council agreed to significantly boost the salary on offer.

I’m not passing judgment on the substance of the announcement, but the timing. It couldn’t have been planned any better if the Mayor’s aim was to deliberately insult council progressives. Send the email blast, close the office for the weekend, go home and have a good chuckle over a glass of your favorite merlot.

This is only the latest in a series of pro-police, anti-“defund” moves by the mayor.

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Now Comes ACLU-VT, Shootin’ Fire

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This summer, we’ve been treated to lamentations by official Burlington — and wildly outlandish claims from rural conservatives — about the onslaught of violent crime that threatens the peace and tranquility of the Queen City (group A) or has turned Burlington into a lawless hellhole (group B).

Well, the ACLU of Vermont is calling bullshit. In a thorough and well-researched letter to Mayor Miro, ACLU-VT’s general counsel Jay Diaz demolishes the lamentations and presents a strong case for the idea that actually, Burlington is a lot safer than it was a few years ago despite the shrinkage in the Police Department.

Man, the facts can be so inconvenient, can’t they?

The letter is well worth reading in its entirety, but here are some highlights.

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It’s the Cluelessness, Stupid

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Here in Vermont, we don’t have a lot of over-the-top, Bull Connor-style racism. What we do have in unfortunate abundance is white obliviousness, born (in part) of infrequent interactions with people outside narrow racial, ethnic, social and economic boundaries.

That includes yours truly, and I freely acknowledge the limitations of my own insight. I’m sure I have economy-sized blind spots. But at least I’m just a blogger. The stakes are a lot higher when people in positions of leadership betray their cluelessness.

So, in the same week when a Georgia sheriff’s officer made a complete ass of himself in saying that a white guy who’d killed eight people, six of them Asian women, was “having a bad day,” we’ve got two examples of the same phenomenon right here in Vermont.

First, I think you can guess, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger’s own goal on police oversight. Second, town officials in Manchester dog-whistling a state program for the homeless.

If you’re only going to read one piece on Weinberger’s blunder, make it state Sen. Kesha Ram’s op-ed on Weinberger and white neutrality. But since she wrote that piece, further developments have made the picture look even worse.

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The Stupidest Scandal

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The latest twist in the story of Brandon del Pozo’s Twitter trolling has got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in politics. Not the most impactful, not the most scandalous, not the most significant — just the stupidest.

For those just joining us, del Pozo resignedas Burlington’s police chief last December after it was revealed that he used a burner Twitter account to criticize pesky police critic Charles WInkleman. At the time, Mayor Miro Weinberger denied all knowledge of del Pozo’s astoundingly petty tweets.

And now, Seven Days has discovered that, well, actually, Weinberger did know about the account after all.

Sheesh. And if you read the entire article, you’ll realize that this isn’t the first time Weinberger has kicked this particular ball into his own goal. Quite the contrary; he’s had, to put it charitably, a tangential relationship with the truth.

It’s just sooooooo stupid. And it might just end Weinberger’s political career.

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Miro’s Opening Salvo

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The Mayor, preparing to launch his attack

One has to assume that Miro Weinberger knew exactly what he was doing when he spent a goodly chunk of his Sunday speech attacking the Progressive Party. I mean, he spent most of his time building a case for his party and his re-election, but he had to know that the attack would dominate the news coverage — and would outrage the Progs.

His address was delivered to the city Democratic Party’s online caucus, which unsurprisingly gave him the party nomination in his bid for a fourth term. In the speech, Weinberger custom-crafted a concept of the Democratic Party writ large, a concept I find unconvincing.

Over and over again, he talked of data, science, and expertise as the foundations of his mayoralty. He recalled the ardent baseball fandom of his youth, which was sharpened by the sabermetric revolution launched by Bill James in the 1980s. It convinced him, he said, that “good analysis and the right experts can have a tremendous impact… and generate life-improving results.” Such as four Red Sox championships, presumably.

So, when he became mayor in 2009, he was “determined to make decisions based on evidence, not conventional wisdom.” He outlined a couple examples of evidence-based policymaking, and then tied it to the city’s response to the coronavirus, for which he claimed “one of the best records of any American city.”

Okay, well, he also governs one of America’s smallest cities in a sparsely populated state largely spared in the first wave, but whatever.

And this led directly into Weinberger’s attack on the Progressive Party.

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This Time, For Sure

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By all rights, Miro Weinberger’s bid for re-election as mayor of Burlington ought to be in deep trouble. During his current term, he has overseen the continual failure of the CityPlace redevelopment, embarrassing leadership shuffles in the Police Department, and a summer of protests over cops accused of excessive force.

Not to mention the arrival of ROOOARRR sorry, the arrival of the RRRROOOOARRRR dammit, the F-35’s RRRROOOOOOAAARRRR screaming across the skies RRRRRROOOOOOOAAAARRRRRRR oh c’mon, of the Queen City.

(Yes, that’s a Thomas Pynchon shoutout. Mandatory reading for the mid-70s college intellectual dudebro.)

There’s also the inevitable Incumbent Fatigue that eventually afflicts administrations, both internally and in public perception. (Vermont Governors usually get at least six years in office if they seek it, but rarely more than eight. Miro’s approaching nine right now.)

And did I mention that Miro won re-election with only 48 percent of the vote last time around?

He still won, because two progressive challengers split the remainder.

And wouldn’t you know it, that seems the most likely scenario again this year. It’s certainly Weinberger’s best hope for success.

It’s a dismally familiar scenario for this observer, who’s watched Purity Wars divide progressive parties and movements for something like 50 years. And I’m sorry, but I usually fall on the pragmatic side of this.

After the jump: Storytime!

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Repeat After Me: The Coverup is Worse Than the Crime (UPDATED)

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Those were the days, my friend…

Brandon del Pozo has bowed to the inevitable, and resigned as Burlington’s police chief. His departure came a mere four days after he admitted to Seven Days’ Courtney Lamdin that he had used an anonymous Twitter account to troll frequent City Hall critic Charles Winkleman.

Still, a whole bunch of questions remain unanswered. But they can all be boiled down to a single multidimensional query:

Why did it take so long?

The original deed — creating a fake Twitter handle to bash a critic, and deleting it almost immediately — would have been a bad look. But a fireable offense? That’s questionable. I think del Pozo would have survived.

Instead, here’s what happened. Del Pozo posted the tweets on July 4. Winkleman took notice, and vented his suspicions to Lamdin. She approached del Pozo on July 23, and he repeatedly denied any involvement. He lied “nearly a dozen times,” as Lamdin reported.

Five days later, del Pozo came clean to Weinberger. The mayor put the chief on medical leave and took away his gun, badge and city-issued cellphone. And told him to stay off social media. (The leave was publicly announced on August 2.)

Del Pozo returned to the job on September 15. And still, nothing about the twitter account and the lies to Seven Days’ city hall reporter. Weinberger kept it under his hat, thinking maybe, I don’t know, it’ll all just go away?

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