Senate panel questions legality, costs of governor’s plan to create Agency of Public Safety

Tucker Anderson, legislative counsel for the Office of Legislative Council, told the Senate Government Operations Committee on Jan. 23 that Executive Order 01-25 would reorganize the Department of Public Safety into a new Agency of Public Safety and, in doing so, “purports to grant authority to the governor to propose the reorganization of an administrative agency in the executive branch.”

The order relies on 3 V.S.A. § 2002, Anderson said, a statute that authorizes the governor to issue executive orders changing the organization of executive-branch agencies. Anderson emphasized the statute allows these executive orders to be “lawmaking” in effect — that is, to supersede existing statutes — and described legal fault lines over whether the General Assembly’s power to disapprove the order can be exercised by either chamber alone or must be bicameral.

Why it matters: If an executive order can change statutory structure without a full…