Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s pick to lead the state police, agency veteran Lt. Col. Roland Butler, cleared a key hurdle Wednesday in his quest to win confirmation for the job.
A Maryland Senate committee voted to approve Butler to become superintendent of the Maryland State Police, advancing his nomination for a vote in the full 47-member Senate.
Should he win approval by the full Senate, Butler will be required to send reports to the Senate detailing his progress toward reforms within the agency. Sen. Pamela Beidle, chair of the Executive Nominations Committee, said the reporting requirements will be written into the state budget.
The committee voted 15-2, with Sen. James Rosapepe and Sen. Malcolm Augustine, both Prince George’s Democrats, voting against.
The vote came without debate. Though Beidle, an Anne Arundel County Democrat, explained the reporting requirements ahead of the vote.
“I had a brief conversation with the governor this morning,” Beidle said, “and while the governor fully supports Col. Butler to be the next superintendent of our state police, he has goals and expectations for the colonel, as do we as senators.”
Beidle said reports will be due in July covering Butler’s efforts toward improving recruitment and retention efforts, reorganizing the agency to provide more opportunities for advancement, developing a fair and merit-based promotions system, improving the equity and inclusion staff to better address trooper concerns and creating a review team to evaluate disciplinary cases for inconsistencies.
The Senate will withhold $250,000 from the superintendent’s budget until the reports are received, Beidle said. That’s a small fraction of the superintendent’s office budget of nearly $34 million. (The entire Maryland State Police budget is more than $500 million.)
“Governor Moore is pleased to see such a well-qualified, historic candidate get out of the Senate Executive Nominations Committee with a strong majority of support,” Moore spokesman Carter Elliott IV said in a written statement.
The statement continued: “With three decades of exemplary service in the Maryland Department of State Police, it’s clear Lt. Col. Butler is the best person to move the department forward.”
The governor nominated Butler to take over a department facing challenges, including a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation into discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, as well as a lawsuit from Black troopers alleging discrimination in disciplinary decisions.
State police also have been criticized for sexist and racist “challenge coins” being circulated among troopers and racist imagery on a target at a shooting range.
And The Baltimore Banner has reported that multiple state police barracks have implemented points-based quota systems to reward troopers for actions including traffic stops and arrests.
Quotas are illegal under Maryland law and Butler — who previously oversaw all barracks as director of field operations — has said he doesn’t support them and did not know about them until the news reports.
During a hearing earlier this week, some senators raised concerns whether Butler, as a career trooper who was in leadership, is the right person to lead an agency in need of reforms. After that hearing, Beidle said she wasn’t sure at that point whether Butler had enough votes.
The next step for Butler’s nomination is the full Senate, which could vote this week and certainly before the Maryland General Assembly session is adjourned on April 10.
