This story by Briana Brady was first published in The Citizen on Aug. 28, 2025.
Hinesburg will be ending its shared police agreement with Richmond on Sept. 8.
Although the towns have not ruled out the possibility of working together on policing in the future, the current breakdown reveals just how complicated it may be for communities to move toward regional systems for services.
The decision by the Hinesburg Selectboard on Aug. 20 to end the inter-municipal contracts for shared policing services and a shared chief came as both towns are negotiating contracts with their individual police unions and after months of slow-moving police governance meetings between members of the selectboards from each town.
According to Hinesburg Town Manager Todd Odit, the catalyst for ending the agreements was two-fold.
Back in the spring, Odit was approached by Hinesburg police officers about receiving reciprocal coverage from Richmond. At that time, Hinesburg was responsible for covering police services in Richmond whenever the Richmond officer was off duty or unavailable. Although both departments were understaffed, Richmond was not responsible for providing services in Hinesburg.
While the towns last week came to an agreement for reciprocal coverage — since July 1 the Richmond officer has been providing policing services in Hinesburg when there are no officers from the Hinesburg department — the Richmond selectboard agreed to start paying its only officer, Matthew Cohen, time-and-a-half when providing those services.
Although Hinesburg has been paying its officers a $500 monthly stipend for covering Richmond, the increase to Cohen’s pay when working in Hinesburg may have created new inequity between the two towns.
The issues with moving forward with shared policing go beyond the potential for pay inequities, however, not least of which is that the towns have been unable to land on what kind of system they want.
The police governance committee first convened in April after the contract for shared chief services fell apart with the departure of the former Hinesburg police chief, Anthony Cambridge. Cambridge resigned as chief in January, seeking employment with Richmond, which effectively ended the agreement — Richmond opted not to hire Cambridge, who has since found employment as a police chief in Wolf Point, Montana, according to the Northern Plains Independent.
The initial goal of the committee, which has met every other week, was to hammer out a new policing contract for the foreseeable future, but also to discuss long-term planning for how the departments may function in the years to come, including the possibility of a unified police district, a separate municipal entity that would receive oversight from members of both towns similar to how a school district operates.
“If we can get to an inter-municipal district at some point, that would be great, and yes, that certainly would have to go to the voters,” Mike Loner, selectboard member from Hinesburg, said at the governance meeting on Monday August 25. “But we keep having this conversation every time we come together, and we’re just spinning our wheels.”
Over the last few months, the committee has been focused on finding an interim shared chief who could help guide the process, whether the goal was a unified district, continued reciprocity, or the folding of one department into the other. It is unclear whether any viable candidates were ever brought forward.
Even without a shared chief or a long-term goal, in the back-and-forth conversations over the current contract and a future system, union negotiations were one of the largest sticking points.
“I think in reality, one town providing police coverage to another town isn’t going to be possible until both towns get through their collective bargaining process,” Odit said at the recent governance meeting.
While both towns are in contract negotiations, they’re starting from different places. Hinesburg only recently unionized and entered bargaining; Richmond is renegotiating its last union contract. Cohen was able to leverage that current contract to start receiving time and a half in Hinesburg — it contains a clause for extra pay for “contracted work.”
However, in negotiations, Hinesburg officers do not currently have that power.
“With the discrepancies between the two unions on pay, I don’t know where we can go into short term unless we solve that somehow,” Josh Arneson, the town manager in Richmond, said.
In part, the concern is that the negotiations will move out of sync with each other. The towns could end up with contracts that maintain or worsen current inequities between the departments, making it more difficult should the departments ever consolidate.
“One of the things we’re dealing with now is that the employees currently know where they work, what they’re doing, what the rules are, anything other than that is an unknown. And you know, most people don’t like unknowns” Odit said, suggesting that, should the towns decide on a long-term goal, each town might have to outline the process in their collective bargaining agreements.
Unless both unions agree to a certain amount of information sharing between the officers and the towns in the bargaining process, the differences will likely continue, and the roadblocks may remain.
For now, the governance committee has suspended meetings until the towns themselves decide whether a unified district is the goal.
