Vermont sheriffs can lose their badge and keep their office

Vermont's State Auditor⧉ -- the state's independently elected watchdog over how public money is spent -- reviewed 20 years of financial audits of the state's 14 elected county sheriff's departments and found 204 individual audit findings since 2006⧉, 32% of them repeats of problems flagged before.▸ Two of those sheriffs, in Franklin and Windsor counties, currently hold no law-enforcement certification at all⧉ -- and both of their departments' books have gone unaudited for years because examiners could not get through the records. Neither fact removes either man from office. In Vermont, nothing short of impeachment does, and impeachment has not succeeded once in the report's review.

The Vermont Criminal Justice Council (VCJC)⧉ -- the body that certifies law-enforcement officers and can strip their credentials after a substantiated complaint -- can revoke a deputy's certification entirely, permanently barring that person from further law-enforcement work anywhere in the state.▸ A sheriff is different. Vermont statute does not require a sheriff to hold any law-enforcement certification⧉ at all, so a decertified sheriff simply keeps the office and keeps managing the department -- signing contracts, running payroll, supervising staff -- just barred from the law-enforcement duties VCJC oversees directly.

The state's only real lever is money: under the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs (SAS)⧉'s model compensation policy, a sheriff's own salary is cut by certification level -- full pay at the top tier, down to a 30% cut with no certification at all.▸ As of March 17, 2026, the sheriffs of Franklin and Windsor counties lack any certification⧉ -- Windsor's suspended after a 2026 arrest, Franklin's permanently revoked in 2022. Both are still in office, drawing a reduced but real salary.

Vermont law requires each sheriff's department to be independently audited every two years.▸ Franklin and Windsor are the exceptions -- and it isn't for lack of trying. The state's contracted CPA firm could not complete Franklin County's last two scheduled audits, in 2022 and 2024, 'due to potential fraud and incomplete records at the department'⧉; the county has gone unaudited since 2020. Windsor's 2025 audit stalled for a related reason: the county did not provide the auditors enough information to proceed⧉. These are the same two counties currently run by decertified sheriffs -- meaning Vermont's two most compromised sheriff's offices are simultaneously the two the state can neither audit nor remove.

Where the audits did go through, they found real money moving without controls.▸ A 2023 audit of Caledonia County found that its outgoing sheriff handed out $402,000 in bonuses before leaving office -- including to himself -- with no formal bonus policy in place⧉ to say what a bonus should even require; the finding is what pushed the Legislature to pass Act 30 in 2023, ordering SAS to write a statewide bonus policy.

In Franklin County, a 2023 impeachment inquiry found that Sheriff Grismore -- who also served as his own department's bookkeeper -- had paid himself both the employer and employee shares of his state pension contribution, totaling $16,550.14, instead of sending the money to the state retirement plan⧉; the department later had to pay the state plan $20,232.02 out of its own funds to cover the shortfall.▸ The House committee weighing five separate grounds for impeachment -- including that payment -- found none of them sufficient⧉, but wrote that Grismore was 'doing Franklin County a disservice by remaining in office.' He remains in office.

Vermont's only removal mechanism is impeachment: the House can vote to charge a sheriff, and the Senate then tries the case.▸ It is, by the auditor's own account, rarely used⧉ -- and in the two cases the report reviewed, it has never actually removed anyone. The last sheriff impeached, Washington County's Malcolm Mayo in 1976, was acquitted by the Senate⧉. The Grismore inquiry in 2023 stopped at the House special committee, which recommended against impeachment.

Compared against the other 49 states, Vermont sits on the weak end of the scale: 21 states require sheriffs to hold law-enforcement certification, and 6 of those automatically vacate the office if it's revoked⧉ -- Vermont requires neither.▸ Sheriffs also retain up to 5% of their departments' service-contract value⧉ for additional pay and operations, money that flows with even less outside review than the audited budget. The auditor's report closes by handing the Legislature a menu of what other states do -- recall elections, gubernatorial removal, court-ordered ouster -- without committing anyone to a deadline for adopting any of it.