Winter assembled a staff with a mix of younger aides and several more experienced politicians. He usually met with them on weekday mornings and let them debate policy amongst themselves before he made his own decision. He tended to delegate authority to his subordinates and left smaller executive matters to his appointees to determine. He kept in regular contact with appointed agency heads through a monthly breakfast, and did the same with the separately-elected officers of other state departments. He supported and signed the Uniform Personnel Act into law in 1980, which extended civil service protections to 27,000 public employees and created a new state personnel board. He also issued an executive order to remove questions regarding race from state job application forms and ended the appointment of honorary colonels. New legislation enabled the governor to dissolve the state Department of Motor Vehicles—which had been marred by corruption in the Finch administration—and consolidate the fifteen agencies managed by the Division of Federal and State Programs into a single office. He also supported new efforts by the Department of Health to raise additional revenue by imposing additional user fees for services and adding a $5 surcharge to traffic infraction fines to create an emergency medical services fund.
