Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Representative Jill Krowinski (Speaker of the House)]: Will the house please come to order and members kindly take their seats? Welcome back. Members, in this block we, are going to take up the Committee of Conference Report on House Bill nine forty four, our transportation bill. And since and the announcement is that the DEMS will be caucusing five minutes after, we recess here. So house bill nine forty four, we will then recess to see if receive anything else back from the senate before the dems will be caucusing five minutes after the floor downstairs. So with that members earlier today the senate message us, message to us the committee of conference report on house bill nine forty four which is an act relating to the fiscal year 2027 transportation program and miscellaneous changes to laws related transportation. The clerk emailed you the committee of conference report at 01:30PM today and it is also posted on the house overview webpage and paper copies are available at the main table. Member from Pultely, can you please offer us a motion to suspend our rules to take up House Bill nine forty four for immediate consideration pending its entry on the notice calendar?

[Representative Patricia McCoy]: Madam Speaker, I make a motion to suspend rules in order to take up for immediate pending entrance on the notice calendar H944.

[Representative Jill Krowinski (Speaker of the House)]: The member from Pulte moves that we suspend our rules to take up House Bill nine forty four for immediate consideration pending its entry on the notice calendar. Are you ready for the question? If so, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. All those opposed please say nay. The ayes appear to have it, the ayes do have it and you have suspended rules to take up House Bill nine forty four for immediate consideration. House Bill nine forty four is an act relating to the fiscal year twenty twenty seven transportation program and miscellaneous changes to laws related to transportation. The bill was referred to a committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the two chambers. The committee of conference has met and considered the same and recommends that the House adopt its report which is in your email, online and in paper copy. Member from Swanton.

[Unidentified Representative from Swanton]: Thank you madam speaker. Good afternoon everyone. Your house transportation committee, and, was very pleased with the, results of the committee of conference. And, I would like to highlight a few of the things. I do have to apologize just to make sure everybody's paying attention that we did go along with the senate rules or the senate section making rules around the log drives in the Connecticut River obsolete. So we did we did include that in the t bill. So no more log drives. You're gonna have to go through the army corps of engineers and and a few other places, but the current rules are that are obsolete are being removed. So we did cave to that senate position. The biggest issue in the t bill that you're you are gonna your constituents are gonna wanna know about that was a is certainly mileage based user fee, and the mileage based user fee will go in effect 01/01/2027, and those revenues will go to the transportation fund. It'll be 1.4¢ per mile for battery electric vehicles only. Battery electric vehicles will have multiple payment options. Those are all in the bill. There is a portion of the t bill that will ask the agency of transportation to come back with recommendations as to how in the future to add plug in hybrid vehicles to the mileage based user fee, but the committee conference has agreed on battery electric vehicles first and recommendations to then incorporate plug in hybrids. There is also a few other provisions, the mileage based user fee being the biggest one. There is a change. The $1,700,000 that we were putting into town highway aid is going to go into state paving. There's been a lot of talk about the lack of paving for roads. I'm not gonna go through and remind you of all the financial troubles in the t fund, but when we have 300 miles of state highway and we're 3,000 and we should be doing 300 a year and we're gonna be a little over a 100, we're gonna fall behind fairly quick. So we agreed to put that additional money from the TIP bond fund over into paving section. There is a provision in with an additional $300,000 but it came from the general fund, not from T funds for expanding and continuing to work on volunteer drivers for mobility programs and Medicare. I would ask that anybody or all of the districts could we could certainly use more volunteer drivers. We have not recovered from post COVID world in managing Medicare drivers and getting people to their medical appointments, and there is additional money to continue to recruit volunteer drivers across the state. So there is an additional provision that we agreed to to look at bonding and to look whether that potentially bonding projects and asking for recommendations and comparisons of financing, whether we could perhaps move projects ahead sooner if we used bonding and also compare the costs and the cost of that money and the value of doing those projects sooner. There is going to be a recommendation and report for the committees to look at if that's another possible option to address our continued transportation funding struggles. There are a few other pieces related to electric chargers, specifically the idea that there's a lot of companies out there offering charging. Think of the idea of this particular provisions is to think that we need to regulate charging in a way that if you pull in a gas station, you can see the price, you know what you're gonna pay, you have confidence that's what you're going to pay. You know what additional charges there may or may not be. There's a section in here about that should become available in the way that we look at chargers for people that are traveling that they'll know what the rates are and they'll know sort of try to build it in the direction that in consumer protection direction related to your EV charging. And we did have to expand and change the dates related to the approval of the agency's continued negotiation of the sale of the Caledonia Airport and again, we caved on the log drives. Madam speaker, we would ask that you support the committee of conference and pass the h nine forty four committee of conference. Thank you.

[Representative Jill Krowinski (Speaker of the House)]: The question is, shall the house adopt the report of the committee of conference on its part? Are you ready for the question? If so, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed please say nay. The ayes appear to have it. The ayes do have it. And the report of the committee of conference is adopted. So just another reminder members that please keep an eye on your email for bills that will be coming over from the senate for us to potentially take up at 4PM and that the Dems are caucusing five minutes after the floor downstairs. With that, the house will stand in recess till the fall of the gavel at 4PM.