Committee advances bill to move governor’s horse and foot guards out of state military department amid debate

The Veterans and Military Affairs Committee voted March 11 to send House Bill 6440, concerning the organized militia and the governor’s guards, to the House floor after lengthy debate about preserving historical units and protecting military readiness.

The bill, as presented by committee leadership, would remove the governor’s horse and foot guards from the statutory structure of the state military department and create a path for those units to operate under private or nonprofit arrangements while preserving certain ceremonial functions. Committee members debated an amendment, LCO 6204, that would have delayed implementation by a year, allowed the guards to organize as private entities that could be reactivated by the governor, required leasing of existing properties to the organizations, shifted liabilities to the guards, and delayed transfers of related funds. The amendment failed by a roll-call tally of 5 affirmative votes and 12 negatives.

Committee members split along lines of competing priorities. Supporters of moving the governor’s guards out of the military department said the military department faces real budgetary and readiness pressures and that transferring administrative responsibility — with appropriate preservation of history — would reduce liabilities on state resources. “We need to make sure that our military department has every resource readily available at their disposal,” the committee chair said during debate, urging colleagues to vote against the amendment and keep working toward a compromise that preserves history while protecting readiness.

Opponents said the guards are longstanding state institutions whose ceremonial roles — parades, memorial events and historic continuity — matter to communities. Senator Austin said she was “completely opposed to removing the horse guard and the foot guard from either state statute or its current way of being,” and urged caution about privatization based on past experiences where privatization produced poor outcomes. Representative Vail said she worried that the units would not be able to raise sufficient funds or maintain facilities if moved out of state support and described efforts to preserve local history as reasons to reject the proposal as drafted.

Several members who voted to advance the bill nonetheless said they were voting to let the process continue so negotiators could finalize details, including memoranda of understanding with nonprofits that could accept fiduciary responsibility while preserving the guards’ names and functions. Representative Delaney, a vice chair of the committee, described his view that members of the governor’s guards who remain within the military department should be subject to the same training and standards as other service members; he said that concern over standards and liability contributed to his support for the underlying approach while he continued to seek protections for the guards’ tradition.

The committee’s action will allow further negotiation on the language as the bill moves to the floor. The vote on the amendment was recorded in committee as 5 affirmative, 12 negative. The committee conducted a roll-call on the bill’s underlying motion to refer HB 6440 to the floor (action: JF to the floor) and recorded individual responses; the clerk left the roll open for additional confirmations.