State Police Shortage Stalls Vermont Program to Protect Highway Workers

Kellen Cloud’s line of work has always been dangerous.

For the better part of the past two decades, Cloud has worked at Green Mountain Flagging, a company that stations traffic controllers at construction sites around the state. He recalled when a coworker had their body pushed by an impatient driver, and when another had to jump out of the way of a truck that would not slow down.

“You have to be a little crazy to do this job,” he said with a laugh, during an interview last month at the company’s headquarters in Williston.

In recent years, though, Cloud said his job has gotten noticeably more dangerous. People seem to be driving more recklessly than in the past, he said — something data suggests could be a lingering impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, data also shows more people are injured or killed in work zones today than a decade ago.

It’s a concern that led Cloud, along with many others in the state’s construction industry, he said, to support a state plan aimed at bolstering speed enforcement in work zones using relatively new technology: automated cameras.

The program, which Gov. Phil Scott signed into law in May 2024, would deploy cameras at a small number of highway work zones around the state over a period of 15 months. The cameras would capture photos of the license plates of cars going at least 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit. After a review by a police officer, speeding drivers would be mailed a warning notice, and if they offended again, could face civil fines.

Under the law, the state was required to start a public outreach campaign about the use of the cameras on April 1, 2025, with a pilot taking effect July 1. But the program — which already exists in some form in more than 15 other states — has yet to materialize.

Vermont Agency of Transportation leaders have said they could not meet the pilot’s deadlines because no law enforcement agency has yet raised its hand to help out. Even though the cameras are automated, under the legislation creating Vermont’s program, a police officer must review the images the cameras collect and send out citations.

That delay has frustrated some legislative leaders in recent months. They’ve criticized Scott’s administration for failing to implement a program the administration supported — especially when there’s often little consequence for speeding through work zones now.

That’s because while police officers typically park near construction sites with their cruisers’ lights flashing, they’re encouraged to remain at their posts rather than leave to chase down a speeder, several state officials said.

Joe Flynn, Vermont’s transportation secretary, said his agency is committed to getting the pilot program underway, even though it will be on a slower timeline than the Legislature dictated. He said officials are confident the cameras could change drivers’ behavior; data from Pennsylvania, for instance, shows speeding in work zones has dropped by 37% since that state first deployed a similar automated system five years ago.

“We just can’t see this being what we thought it would be,” Flynn said of the program as written in the 2024 law. “We need to just rework it. So that’s what we’re doing.”

But Cloud said that, for him and his colleagues, the safety improvements the cameras could bring are long overdue. Cloud is now Green Mountain Flagging’s operations director, training new employees regularly. He called the delay “frustrating” and “discouraging.”

“It’s our job to protect,” he said. “Why aren’t we being protected?”

‘Pass a hot potato’

That a program using automated technology would be hobbled by concerns about human staffing seems counterintuitive. But leaders in the Scott administration have been adamant that unless lawmakers remove police officers from the process, the administration may not be able — or willing — to move the program forward.

The legislation states that a “law enforcement officer” has to be the one to issue citations for speeding through work zones, but it does not task a specific agency with that work. However, as the law was being finalized last year, according to Flynn, it was “starting to seem as though this was going to fall squarely” on the Vermont State Police, even though it wasn’t necessarily designed that way.

During a House Transportation Committee hearing in May, state police leaders insisted they did not have the resources to help facilitate the program. Col. Matthew Birmingham, the director of the state police, said the agency had 54 open positions among its ranks of certified troopers at the time, or about a 17% vacancy rate.

“It just would not make any sense to me,” he told committee members. “There will be something that will have to be given up — and at this point I don’t know what that is because everything we’re handling is violent crime and crimes against people and potentially dangerous crimes like DUI and aggravated aggressive driving.”

Vermont Public Safety Commissioner Jennifer Morrison — whose department includes the state police — also pushed back on the idea the state police could take on the work. She told legislators the issue is “not one of our willingness to enforce traffic laws,” but rather “one of resource allocation.” To illustrate her point, she and the department’s policy director, Mandy Wooster, offered estimates of the amount of time it could take officers to review the violations generated by the pilot program each day.

Wooster said part of the challenge would be officers needing to cross-reference the identity of the owner of a speeding car with a database of people who are members of the U.S. military, because soldiers and sailors on active duty can get extended time to pay or contest certain citations, such as speeding tickets, under federal law.

She told the committee that, when accounting for that database check, it could take seven or eight minutes to process each violation. She said the administration had been operating under an assumption there would be a maximum of 1,000 citations issued during a regular, eight-hour workday — which, when multiplied by the time to process each case, could result in well over 100 hours of officers’ time each day.

That’s in addition to extra time required if people who received a violation contested the ticket in court, which is allowed under Vermont’s law as written, Morrison noted.

“I’m not looking to pass a hot potato over to someone else,” the commissioner said. “But I’m very clearly signaling that we do not have the capacity to take this on as the sole owner of this project.”

Per the legislation, drivers would face no fine for a first offense caught on camera, an $80 fine for a second offense and a $160 fine for a third offense, provided those subsequent violations occurred within a year. A violation would not levy any points on a driver’s license, state officials have said.

Not everyone agrees with the administration’s estimates, though. Rep. Phil Pouech, D-Hinesburg, the transportation committee’s ranking member, said Morrison and Wooster were relying on the “worst case scenario” and, in his view, exaggerating the amount of officer time the program would require. If 1,000 people were speeding through work zones every day, he contended, the state had a problem on its hands that warranted addressing immediately.

Pouech pointed to earlier testimony the committee received from a company that makes and operates automated speed enforcement cameras describing how it could take less than one and a half minutes to review each violation.

“The state police clearly just put up a giant smoke screen with their calculations of how much time this was going to take,” Pouech, who’s among the program’s most vocal supporters, said in an interview. “It seems like that was more of an excuse.”

In Pennsylvania — which Flynn said operates the closest example to what is being proposed in Vermont — a dedicated state police unit reviews all automated violations that carry fines, according to a report on the program. Last year, automated cameras were used roughly 2,500 times across 55 different roadway projects in that state.

Pennsylvania State Police spokesperson Sgt. Logan T. Brouse wrote in an email that it takes three minutes for officers to process speed camera violations in that state on average.

Flynn said that, even considering data from other states, he stood by the administration’s time estimates for the program in Vermont. Compared to Pennsylvania, Vermont is a far smaller state with more limited law enforcement resources, he said.

When Vermont’s state police say they can’t help run the pilot, Flynn said, “I take it on face value — and I don’t question what they say about (their) ability to manage this, or not.”

‘They’re sitting on their hands’

At the same time, officials considered — and decided against — having another statewide law enforcement agency support the program. The Department of Motor Vehicles Enforcement and Safety Division, which is under the purview of the transportation agency, has a number of certified police officers on its staff.

The “DMV Police” inspect commercial vehicles for safety and conduct their own highway speed enforcement, among other duties, Flynn said. Notably, the force is fully staffed, with Flynn estimating the division has 30 employees statewide.

But Flynn said he was hesitant to commit one or more of his officers’ time to reviewing and issuing citations. The small force’s time, he said, is better spent out in the field where it often backs up other law enforcement agencies, including the state police.

“It just seemed to really be overly burdensome to field forces who otherwise are already fully busy on a daily basis,” he said. “Where can you best use the really highly talented and trained resources that you have, when really, this is an administrative process?”

Flynn said he now plans to meet with leaders from another realm of law enforcement — the state’s 14 county sheriffs — to find out if any of their departments could support the pilot program, rather than a statewide law enforcement agency.

Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux, vice president of the statewide association representing sheriffs, said last week he needed to learn more about the program before he could say whether he or his counterparts could take on the additional work. He said conversations about the program seemed like a priority for the state transportation agency.

Sheriff’s departments already partner with state agencies for some jobs, such as transporting youth who are in the custody of the Department for Children and Families, he said.

However, he continued, “the state police don’t have a monopoly on the staffing issues. You know, I’m short people. And every sheriff’s department is short people.”

Morrison, in testimony to the Legislature earlier this year, suggested lawmakers could also find a way to reconstitute the program so police don’t need to be involved at all. One option could be having the company the state chooses to operate the camera system issue fines to violators, itself, she said.

Flynn said his agency was working on bill language it could bring to the Legislature for the 2026 legislative session, which starts in January, to amend the program. In the meantime, he said the state would “plus-up” the number of officers stationed around work zones who would be tasked, specifically, with pulling over speeders.

Rep. Matt Walker, R-Swanton, chair of the House transportation committee, said he would consider any new language the agency presents next year. He said he’s concerned, however, that the timing is such that it could end up being a year from the program’s original effective date that cameras finally make it onto the roads.

Walker said his committee did not have enough time before the end of this year’s session, which was in mid-June, to make any adjustments to the existing law. During a hearing in late April, he said that from a “sixth-grade social studies perspective,” he was frustrated the executive branch of state government wasn’t following a law the Legislature had passed a year before, regardless of what it was requiring.

“And at the nine-plus month mark, we are finding out that it’s not going to happen,” he said at the time. “So that is a little bit frustrating.”

Walker’s counterpart in the Senate, Lamoille County Republican Richard Westman, said he also had concerns about the timing of the program, but noted the program has been a larger priority for the House. The Senate Transportation Committee chair said the state transportation agency was short-staffed and has challenges of its own.

Pouech, the House transportation ranking member, had stronger words.

“It passed. The governor signed it, and now they’re sitting on their hands,” he said. “I feel bad for the people who work out there. … We have a speeding problem all over the state, and here is a chance to do something about the construction zones.”

A need for more enforcement is what concerns Cloud, the longtime Green Mountain Flagging employee, the most. He said the state has already tried other solutions, like public service campaigns using digital billboards. None of those efforts seemed to have meaningfully changed drivers’ behavior, he said.

He does not think the cameras are the only solution to make drivers more aware of workers on the road, “but it’s got to start somewhere,” he said.

“If it’s time for some enforcement, then it’s time for enforcement,” Cloud said. “Something has to make them pay attention.”

This story was originally published by VTDigger and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.