Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: There's the live red button. Excellent. Good afternoon. It is Tuesday, 01/13/2026 here in the House Transportation Committee. Today, we are joined by Acosta Pappas from the Agency of Transportation, federal policy director. We're going to hear about federal highway money grants, go to the current, what's in lieu, what we're going for, what's the future look like, and any and all other questions that the committee has. I know that he has a presentation that is, I'm sure, on the committee page. If it isn't, it will be shortly. And I would say, do we need a minute of administrative because I

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: have some announcements I could

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: do if we need to. But otherwise, we just go on. I'll hit the administrative announcements for our next break. So if you're all set and processed, thank you much, and

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: it's all yours. Great. Okay. Thank you, mister chair, members of the committee. This is an update on federal policy, specifically dealing with the reauthorization. I do this periodically to let the committee know what's going on in Washington. Sometimes we know more than other clients, and of course I don't have a crystal ball, but I'm going to frame some issues for the committee to consider as we go through this federal five year reauthorization process. So I'm glad to be here, lot of familiar faces and some new faces. Federal transportation policy is critical to the state transportation program. I think you had a joint hearing with House Lates and Means where Logan talked about how 53% or so of the transportation budget is derived from federal sources. That varies from year to year depending on the grants that we receive, and unfortunately depending on a disaster that number can inch up even higher. And I say unfortunately, because disaster funding is not the type of federal funding we want coming here. We'd rather avoid the disasters and not have those federal funds. So it's a huge part of the transportation program. And it also generally comes up every five years for the surface mode. So this committee deals with the transportation program on an annual basis. Your counterparts in the Senate do the same. In Congress, it's generally every five years. So every five years, we carefully monitor what's happening in Washington, given how dependent we are on these federal funds and what we can do with them. So this is just kind of an overview of how our different modes of transportation are funded. The highway and transit modes tend to be formula funds that kind of dedicated federal funding that are recurring and come to us every year. The aviation and rail programs are mostly dependent on discretionary grants where we have to apply and compete with other states to get that funding. The federal share really ranges, it can go anywhere from 50% for certain types of transit operations, all the way to 90 plus percent for an interstate project, and for safety and governance, go even higher. So for capital projects, the vast majority of the funding for state bridges and highways and public transit, railways and airports, the vast majority of it comes from federal funding sources. Here's a simple illustrative chart that shows you how we go from one end of the spectrum with just dedicated annual formula funding to the other end where we're completely dependent on competitive grants to undertake capital projects. You see that in aviation. We get a little over $1,000,000 for basic airport operations, but for capital projects, we're totally dependent on the federal government. Rail functions the same way. No grants, no work other than the state appropriation that occurs every year. So these are very important considerations for us as Congress works on the next five year bill because we're so dependent on these different funding sources.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Just a quick question, can you speak to the more dependent on the granting portion of aviation, what percentage sort of like ballpark, what percentage of applications get denied? So it's dependent on it, is

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: that routine that we don't get what we ask? So we've done very well, we're batting about 500. The odds of getting these grants for the most part, I compare it to getting admitted to an Ivy League school, it's 8%. They are extremely competitive. And that's one of the issues is when we're so dependent on this funding and we're only supposed to hit eight out of every 100 times, it it can be problematic. We've done well with grants, we're really aggressive when it comes to pursuing them. I'll give you an example representative of the Vermont railway between Rutland and Hoosick. Three brands for that one. There was a $20,000,000 build brand, then there was a $13,000,000 build brand and a $10,000,000 build brand since 2018. So that's three in seven years. River The Bridge, two major grants, one for about $24 $25,000,000 the other one for about 20,000,000 The Reedsboro Bridge in Southern Vermont about 25,000,000. So the grants come in and we've been fortunate to have a pretty decent batting average. But that's one of the issues I'm going talk about is what happens when the IIJ expires? Are these grant programs going to stick around given that they were for the most part one time general fund dollars? That's a big concern that we have heading into this reauthorization.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just wanted that context of sort of

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: We have more bridges, we have to replace the track on the There's a lot of projects that are dependent on grants, it keeps me up at night knowing that September 30, the IIGA expires, and we don't know what's going to happen next. Representative Pouech? So what you're saying

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: is the grant money that we've been spending trying to get the train to go to Bennington, That was just one time money in the IIJA and that there's not like a ongoing formula of how much money is available for grants.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: For the most part, correct. So the program that representative Brokman was referring to, that was around before the IIJA, but it was funded at 300,000,000 a year, not $2,000,000,000 a year. So that's an example of one that was around pre IIJA, the build grants also referred to as rates and tighter over the years, they keep changing the names, those were around before, but 20 of the 26 were introduced as part of the IIJA. And when Congress allocates general funds to them, there's no kind of technical expectation that they're going to be around afterwards. They can reauthorize them or reappropriate these programs, But remember that the IIJA was signed during an era where unemployment was double digits. There was a lot of concern in Washington as the economy was struggling under the COVID-nineteen pandemic. So a lot of funding was injected to it to provide what's effectively a stimulus type activity. Well, the pandemic is no longer with us. Are they going to continue that? And we don't know. And that can have a dramatic effect on the overall program, because we'll rely on these dollars and use the state appropriation to maximize those federal funds for all the months. Think of the public transit vehicles we've purchased over the past few years, the electric, the hybrid, whatever type of transit vehicle. That was a massive injection of funding from Congress into these programs, and we don't know if they're going to be around in seven or eight months.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And one more just sort of follow-up. Is it fair to say now, you're telling us, hey, and Vermont really relies on these, and we were very fortunate to get the amount we got, and we're really concerned. Is it fair to say all other 49 states are would say the same thing? Or are there some states saying, hey, we're getting ripped off. You're giving too much money to Vermont or

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. Representative, I can't speak for other states, but if you look around us, the amount of grant funding that's gone to states, the Cape Cod bridges, that's a lot of money. Again, I can't speak on their behalf, but that's a multi billion dollar project, and I think they were close to a billion dollars in grant funding. Thanks.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: All right, every

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: five years the transportation bill comes up. I mentioned that September, the current one expires. If the federal funding comes to us for highways and transit via the Highway Trust Fund for the most part, but also general funds have been a staple of the funding that comes to states for probably twenty years now. At one point the Highway Trust Fund, the outlays kind of equaled the revenue that was coming in. That hasn't been the case in a very long time. There's always been general funds for the past two decades transferred into that to kind of keep the highway trust fund afloat. The federal gas tax hasn't increased since 1993, it's remained what it is and the funding that comes to us, comes to us in different buckets. So it's not, here's a block grant for your whole transportation program, the list that you see is the buckets that they show up and these are the dedicated formula funds that we've been getting every year from the IIJA, and some of these have been around for a very long time, like the top two on the list that pay for interstate highways and bridges. The second one that pays for state highways, town bridges, recreational trails, transportation alternatives, just a variety of different programs. The bottom two were brand new introduced during the IIJ. So the carbon reduction program and the protect resilience program were all creations of the IIJA. And that's another question that I'll address in a little while about whether some of these programs are going continue.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm going go out on the limb and answer for a few. I don't

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: think so. We don't we really don't know how much does Congress value some of these programs, and do they want to keep them, and that obviously is going to butt against the fiscal realities of the last bill was very dependent on the general fund. So there's kind of two questions here for Congress to answer. Are you going to continue some of these programs, yes or no? And number two, where's the funding going to come from?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So prior to the IIJA money, didn't we have another grant that was similar to that? Which one? IIJA money. Wasn't there prior grant that kind of did the same thing?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Oh, the formula funds. Yeah, the FAST Act. The difference and you can see it in the table here is that the IIJA injected a lot more money than historically these other transportation bills. So just the formula funds, we got a 35% increase over the last five year bill. And then if you add the general fund supplemental funds that we got for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, that's the NEVI program, and a general fund bridge program, $225,000,000. That program alone is the equivalent or was the equivalent of one year of all the federal transportation funds that we got. It's a huge amount, it averages an extra $45,000,000 a year over five years, over about 30% of that went to local bridges. Remember the funding that had the construction component being 100% federal, that's this pot of money. So the issue here is more than a philosophical policy on whether we should include certain programs or not, right, like the climate ones we were just talking about. These are bridges and they came out of the general fund. So no one's going to argue over the merits of bridges in Washington, but they may argue over is the general fund the suitable vehicle to pay for this? And that's one of my concerns is that it's more than just a policy discussion on what should get funded and what should not. There's some serious general fund money in here for bridges that we're not sure will continue. If it doesn't continue, then we're gonna have to have some serious discussions on how we maintain certain programs, because this allows funding to go to other priorities too, roadway reconstruction and a bunch of other things. Okay, so the uncertainty I've already discussed. I've also talked about how 20 of the 26 grant programs were introduced during the IIJA and the economic kind of stimulus component to that bill by adding all this funding. So what typically, again, there's no crystal ball here, but what happens when there's a massive injection of federal funding that's supposed to be one time. There's two examples that we can pull from to see historically what happens. The first was back in 2008, 2009. The financial crisis, again concerns over unemployment and the economy really taking a downward spiral. Vermont received about $300,000,000 in what at the time was referred to as ERA funding. That was the I can't read what it's covering here, but that was one time money that we were supposed to stimulate the economy. We did. All those dollars were programmed and they were expended and what happened afterwards, Congress did not keep them going, right, so they disappeared. The second example is the FAA Reauthorization Bill. Aviation is authorized separately from public transit, highways, rail. Those are surface mounts. Aviation has its own reauthorization bill. In 2024, it was reauthorized. So we're talking calendar year 2023. And what they did for the program that matters to us, the poor program that we use to improve airports, is that they increased funding by about 20% in year one, then they kept it level for four more years and they eliminated all the IIJA supplementals that were added to the aviation program. So what that means in practical terms is, we're level, the IIJ comes along, we spike double the previous budgets. And then the IIJ expires in 2026 and we go back down because they chose not to extend. So to your question representative of what's the certainty or how do we know? We will never know until we see a piece of legislation and the funding amounts that are associated with it. But historically what's happened, this is one example of where the stimulus lasts for a little while, then you go back down. So I get asked this question a lot, what's going to happen with federal funding in the future? I can never answer it fully, but what I tell folks is that formula funds historically inch upward. We haven't seen really a transportation bill that formula funds decline. They always inch up. The problem is when your baseline for the past five years has been this amount and you go down, you can imagine how our batting average may not survive. If this happens in the highway and public transit world, there's going to be less dollars, it's going to be more competition, and I think it's not unreasonable to think that maybe we're going to get less grant funding coming in. So this is just a summary slide that discusses everything I just mentioned a few minutes ago about what keeps us up at night. It's these things. It's what happens with this massive bridge program that we've used very successfully over the past four years and will continue for the next year. What happens to some of these policy initiatives that the administration may not agree with, carbon reduction, resilience, that's a big unknown. And finally the 20 grant programs, not just their number, but also the amount of funding that was attached to them is pretty big. So that's what we're watching out for. This is what we're concerned about on the federal level given its potential kind

[Unidentified Committee Member]: of

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: fiscal impact or financial impact on our overall transportation program.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Counsel, have you heard any discussion, maybe I think someone covered it, but there was discussions about obviously changing the Congress, changing small state minimums have been a huge boom to our state and many others for quite some time, but I have heard some discussion, perhaps today, it's not a Republican Democrat issue, but a big state small take through the papers. Have you heard any movement at all about whether there is any effort you think in this reauthorization bill that they will make changes to or do away with small state minimums?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, it's always been a topic of discussion, always going back to safety loot twenty years ago. I haven't heard anything this year. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is aiming to have a bill drafted sometime this spring and if that's the case, they're going be holding a lot of hearings before they draft their bills and that's the point at which I think we would hear more about this concept if it were to become an issue. But it's definitely not a new thing. In fact, the IIJ was signed into law, the House and the Senate had their own versions of a reauthorization bill. The House bill included language to study a recalculation and a recalibration of the federal formula fund method. It didn't change anything, but it required a legislative study. So it's not a new phenomenon. Keep hearing about it periodically and we have for the past two decades. Late winter, early spring, if that becomes an issue, we're definitely going to hear it in the House P and I committee. At least for the House, the Senate's a little behind with their bill, and the House will likely come out with their bill first.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I thought it was relatively new, I mean the concept made the discussion, I thought the implementation of that was relatively new to Senator Lee. That only took effect in the last

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: pre authorization. No, the small state minimum, and I don't know that, I think that's the term we use for it in Vermont, I don't know that that's an actual term outside the state, but it actually dates back to safety lose. So we're going back two decades and the actual method to do that was that every program that I showed on the list and I'll pull them up just for years, so all of these programs, the upper part of this table, carved out using different methods like mileage and population, typical criteria you would use. But they included a provision that no state shall get less than fill in the blank as it differs by program, and that's how you got to the small state minimum. Yeah, didn't realize I went back to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: that part because I thought it was little late, so was it true that he sort of got this? I don't know, I always thought that he just sort of

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I don't know.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Got this small state memo, if you want to call it that.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Apparently, maybe not. Yeah, I don't know that it was a specific senator. Mean the Senate, know, there's Yeah, that's what I

[Unidentified Committee Member]: was he was credited

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: with that. Maybe that's what I I'm so sorry, but been here. Yeah.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So this issue you can go back to 1960s when the Eisenhower interstate era began, the federal government was funding highways based on where the need to build interstates was at any given time. So there was always an element of they collected fuel taxes but the way they allocated them was based on needs to build the interstate system and that just continued. Then in the 80s you had to maintain it and then you had the state highways that became important and the national highway system. So it was never designed from the start to be some sort of here's what you contribute, here's what you give. There's federal lands, there's trails, some states have and some states don't. So get back to the 60s, but during safety Lou about twenty years ago, that's when these you know, no state shall receive less than came into existence, and I think it was probably a combination of different Senate delegations, given that they're, you know, senators for the most part represent rural areas, and there's very few urban only states. So I don't know who specifically, but it definitely takes from what I thought was sort of fact.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I think our senators and congressperson at the time actually were instrumental in using that for COVID. County measures. That's where we got the minimum amount, which is a lot

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: of housing.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Twice, not once, but twice.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, and you'll find them across different federal programs. I don't think it's exclusive to transportation or the disaster situations. Think they're pretty common across different federal programs. Representative Pouech and

[Unidentified Committee Member]: then Representative

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: White. Yes, thanks for doing this. So we expect sometime in September here, but have they not like, you know, been late to the party and will we typically just continue to get the formula funds the way they are now?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. So every piece of legislation during my career, every five year bill and I'm going back over twenty five years has not gone according to schedule. Don't remember one actually corresponding with its expiration date. So what happens in that case is that there's a two fold process within the transportation committees, there's an extension, they call it a contract extension, which simply means take the IIJ move it out another year or so. And then the appropriators have to do a continuing resolution to go along with it. That's been the norm. But in this case, I think in the House, the chair of that committee, the rules governing how that party awards chairmanships is that you can only do two terms. He persuaded his caucus to allow a waiver of that because he's adamant that we need to have a transportation bill in place on time. So take that history and take the motivation of particular members of Congress and I'm not sure where we're going to end up. But it's entirely possible we can have a bill in September if the House has one ready to go by spring. Representative White?

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: So can you just clarify for me, so the formula funds, are those, that, because I'm looking at highways, 80 to 90% federal funds plus formula funds. So what's the difference between formula funds and federal funds?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Grant funds, yeah. So the difference is the formula funds are in this five year bill, they allocate funding every year for the five years. So it's a predictable funding stream. We know that a

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: reliable funding stream coming from the federal government that we can use for transportation projects separate from grant funding.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: That's right. So every year we get an allotment and we know that allotment five years. I mean the appropriators can always say, no, know there's too much money, we're cutting it back. But those funding amounts in that five year bill are pretty reliable. And those are the ones that

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: are typically about our total transportation budget? Everything combined is over half. So the 4 mil funds plus the grant.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Plus the grants, yeah, and the disaster funding when those dollars come in too. The grant funds, have uncertainty, right? So if there was a rail service that needed to be established and you had formula funds, you can do it much quicker than applying for grants because we have to get the grants, we have to meet all these requirements, you've got to do it in smaller chunks because you're not assured that you're going to have future funding. The formula funds make it much easier. You can plan out five years knowing that you're going to have federal funds for transit vehicles and highway bridges and whatever it is the project is. Where with grants it's much more complicated. You've got to do them in smaller chunks.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: And when we're applying for the grants, it sounds like, as you said, it's very competitive. Is there a bit of a political system in terms of here are Vermont's applications, sending them down to Washington, do we have a Vermont representative down there who's shepherding them through the transportation committee down there? How does that work?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well the grants, the decision making on grants lies with the Office of the Secretary. So these are executive decision making that's occurring with these grants. Typically what happens is we apply for a grant, it goes to whatever the federal model administration is. So if it's a rail one, will go to the Federal Railroad Administration. If we want transit vehicles, it's the Transit Administration. They evaluate them and then they send the list up to the Office of the Secretary, and that's where decisions are made on grants. In a nutshell, that's how the process works. Who gets involved in what they do, I don't know.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I just didn't know, just as we have advocates here in the building working to push their agendas forward, does the state of Vermont have advocates down in Washington working to make sure our grant applications are getting reviewed in a timely manner, and answering any questions, and so forth.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, I can't speak for our congressional delegations, but I presume that there's a lot of bad activity going on.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I love that question. There's criteria for these grants. So is there a sort of a chat there that says, hey, this grant doesn't meet the criteria, this one does, so therefore it shouldn't be aborted. I mean, you see some kind of check and balance, can you take them to court if you don't get the grant and you think you deserve it?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I mean I guess anybody can sue for whatever reason whether it's successful or not. I mean going back to my analogy about Ivy Litologist, so you have 100 applicants and 80 of them are straight A students with the highest SAT scores you can imagine and you can only admit 50, and what do you do in that situation? I think these grants are by virtue of their popularity, many applications, are talking hundreds of applications. How do you decide who to admit kind of the same idea here with these grants? And we don't know, we don't know what goes into the black box of decision making for these opportunities, but that's the level of competitiveness that we're talking about. Some are 80%, 10%, they're hyper competitive. But they're also critical and that's always a concern is, are they going to be around? Because we have a lot of bridges that we can use this funding for, we have a lot of transit vehicles that need to be replaced, airports need a lot of rehabilitation and reconstruction, rail. It's never ending in the infrastructure world. Our hope is that these grant programs do not go away, given how important they are to our transportation program.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So on this particular slide, wouldn't our, or maybe doesn't, own transportation program that's in the Vermont state transportation would have a similar type of line? In other words, formula funds, town highways, whatever, they get x amount of money every year no matter what or whatever they get. And then there's over here on the right, you could have the downtown grants or the bike bed grants or the stuff other that and there's other bridging programs that they can apply to. We have a similar sort of chart that says these ones are formula funded and this stuff is grants.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: You'd have a similar chart. You could potentially have a similar chart on our own state transportation budget, I guess. It would not look like this one because the decision for grants are not mold specific, So within this one there's a very clear line. If it's an airport, it's gotta get a grant. If it's a rail, it's gotta get a grant. Our state equivalent chart would be kind of messy because you've got this highway funding, right? And then we have to work within certain parameters. Some of the funding has to be competitively bid out to municipalities. So think of all the bike pad enhancements and then even within those, some of it has to go to mitigation, some of it has to prioritize bike and pet projects. So it would look very different. We wouldn't have rail or aviation, towns don't apply for those but in your highways, in your transit, in your piece we still have the difference between funding the funds and grants on a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: regular And we have a scorecard out there, some might argue is whatever that percentage was that you suggested in the amount that were approved. And we have towns that feel that they're not going to get

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: based on how many they're going get, but it does work the same way in terms of certain programs are formula funding, certain pieces are competitive brands. That's right.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It just happens to be that rail and aviation are state only, they're already separate from that.

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, that's an accurate assessment. One thing I didn't mention about the discretionary grants is the municipalities have gotten a lot of these grants too. They're not all coming to my mind right now, but you know, Killington, Burlington, South Burlington, St. Albans, a lot of build grants which could have been raise grants or tiger grants at the time were awarded to municipalities. So these are not exclusively state DOT programs. A local government can apply for them. Addison County, they got one for a transit facility. So they go all over the place and they're not limited to states. Local governments can also and that's another thing is that if these programs go away, the grant programs, there's obviously a huge disadvantage for the state because we apply for them frequently. That's also true of local governments that have their own priorities about enhancing their roadways and The examples I just mentioned, Killington South Burlington, I think you're talking 60,000,000 plus, plus St. Albans. You keep adding ACTR for, I'm sorry, the transit operation in Addison County, it's a law for local governments, too. These are not by any means impacting only the state if they go away. Well, you have earmarks on federally directed spending, I guess, as another column beyond dedicated formula funds and competitive grants. Well, those don't fall into either category. So there hasn't been earmarks in close to two years, right? There was no appropriations bill last year. So there's no appropriating bill, there's no earmarks. And earmarks kind of come and go and the priorities of Congress keep changing on them too. Know one year they'll allocate a billion dollars nationwide for earmarks, the next year that may go down to a couple of $100,000,000. So those are very inconsistent. Once the grants are authorized and appropriated, they're very consistent. They're very competitive, but it's consistent. We know that every year there will be grants for everything I just mentioned, whether it's a local project or a state project. With earmarks you don't know. And you also don't know the scope of it either. Can you get a $10,000,000 earmark? It's possible, Burlington did it. Have we seen one in the past five years anywhere near that dollar amount? No. So that one would go into the bucket of what I call extreme volatility, because we don't know from one year to the next and we also don't know the parameters. Those are not controlled necessarily by our own delegation, they're put in as earmarked requests to the Appropriations Committee of each chamber. So there's another level of decision making that occurs even above our congressional delegation.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Last year at this time, there was a lot of discussion about funding that happened. We have these like the NEVI program, the funding's off, now it's back on. Has that sort of smoothed out at this point? I mean, the Winooski Bridge is a big one and they've got the grants, but is there any, should we like, we count on it?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: On the funding arriving? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's grant agreements in place for that. It's always possible that an administration can send a decision built to Congress. I mean, these are all kind of formal mechanisms if they want to. They can send a bill that says we're resending everything. And if Congress approves it, it's the law of the land. Is it likely? Probably not. When you sign a grant agreement and you're obligating funding, that's an IOU, that's a promissory note to pay in the future.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: But wasn't the NEVI program like that and they changed the criteria in the middle of it?

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well, changed the funding parameters, but they didn't withhold the money. Permanently, we obligated those funds. But whenever you have a transition from one administration to the next, Usually it's more clean in terms of your funding situation. It's rare that you have a transition like that when you have the IIJ and 20 grant programs. So this was kind of unchartered territory. And administrations always reserve the right to change their policy orientation. When the next administration comes in, may do the same thing. But to legally prevent funding from flowing to a state or a municipality or a non profit, wherever the money is destined for, there has to be a congressional act to do that. And you saw that with the you may remember we were awarded, I think it was about $14,000,000 for what was referred to as the Low Car Rental Transportation Materials Grant Program. The idea there was finance the bridges and the roadway work we do with climate friendly materials, reducing the carbon footprint. That was included in the rescission bill, they call it budget reconciliation. It was sent to Washington, Congress approved it, so that money disappeared. But nobody had obligated any of that funding, it wasn't at the obligation stage left.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Think we're any other questions? I guess we're at the end of your spot and your time. I thank you very much for coming in. I've got a couple of announcements before we break on. Alison Crowley on behalf of the Vermont Rail system delivered our calendars for Vermont Rail system. If you want one, please take it and pass it along. They're pretty cool. And I got a spot that was empty that needs to be filled. You'll see the agenda is out tomorrow is very much a public highway safety crash data. We're going to hear from the state police. We're going hear from the DMV. We're going hear from the agency. It's an entire day of testimony directed at the speakers' requests related to highway safety. Then we have public transit. There's been a change in Washington County, Franklin County. There's also issues in terms of what the future of Liberty Mountain Transit and update. They've had changes in their structures and pieces and routes. So that day is coming up. Next Tuesday, we won't meet as a committee, but we'll have the governor's budget address. And then we will do a normal secretary will come in and deliver the budget on a higher level. And then every department head will come in after thereafter and present their section. And then we will start digging into it. The T bill piece won't come for at least a week or more after the budget address. We won't get into the actual language on the T bill until after we're already digging into the budget. We won't get our hands on that. The white book is not coming on the day of the budget delivery. We're not going to see the white book for at least a week. They're having some printing problems and some finishing issues. So the white book won't be with our normal budget delivery. Usually we come back from the budget address and they're sitting on our desks. They're not going to be there. The white book is delayed this year, so we won't see that for a little bit. Yes, R. Speaking

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: of the white book, I have the binders from last year. I suspect

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: they would be happy to get those back. Mention them to Michelle when she comes through. The black book is the next piece. Right now there isn't one And they're saying that under some new changes that will be online and they will show us where to go find that information, etcetera. We're gonna do a little digging into that, but that was a bit of a surprise to learn today. We're I think my dad knows. We're gonna dig into that a little bit. The Black Book is potentially an online thing for us to do through, but we shall see. I just wanted to be thank This you, will not be, there's a couple of unusual things and I thought the committee should be aware of that, but We're not getting a hold of the white book as soon and there is currently not a plan for a black book somewhere online. And you did get it. On the good side of the news, my favorite calendars. That was not the only positive meeting.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Where are the old ones that were out there?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I think they took them for the binders to build the new ones.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Mine's right here.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I have them there,

[Acosta Pappas (Federal Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: but I can still find one. Have mine if they want.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Suppose