Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chloe Tomlinson (Clerk)]: You're live, Patricia.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We're live. All yours. So we're resuming our testimony. House and Senate Transportation with Commissioner of DMV and are ready to go through your budget.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Great, thank you Chair. Chair Walker, members of the House of Senate. So again, Andrew Collier, Commissioner D and B here to present the FY '27 budget, and as well as you'll see we don't have significant changes from our last year budget that presented here, so we'll jump through, we'll go to the second slide here. This is just showing budget versus actual for FY '26, just a snapshot of where we are right now. Though we've only gone through 40.9% of our budget, don't worry everything is planned to be spent for our contracted services, just our billing's been a little off. Slide three, this is a snapshot that some of you have saw with the economists, state economists, where our funding for DMV is split out. Then on the '27 government recommended budget for DMV. So we are showing an increase in our personal services just like all other departments, our salary and wages going up with the contract services and then the additional fringe benefits that go along with that. Then we're also showing a 1.33 if you're looking on personal service on the right 1,330,000.00 increase our contractual services and that's a mixture of grants that we're showing here on paper and then just our increases on some of our contracts that we have. So on the right hand side of that paper on the operating costs, we're showing that decrease of 1,330,000.00. This is a large part driven by a change in the credit card fee structure, which we are gonna be doing along with some other enterprise across state government, specifically DMV. The credit card fees will no longer be absorbed by the DMV. This will be passed on to consumers. I want to make it very clear that with our new path program ACH within our contract is covered in a fee with that. So we monitor and have a free option to use ACH paying online. Also in our all our locations, checks are accepted and then patches accepted at our full time locations, our mobile sites. We don't have that ability, so I've asked our operations record just to start having discussions on if that's something we can change going as we change our business models, if that's something we can implement in our mobile units. We're showing just some highlights from operating costs. Civus, which is a commercial driver's license information system. There was a fee that we paid through AMVA, which is the National Association of More Beautiful Administrators. And they have a connection point to the federal government DOT system for driver's license for CDLs and other programs that we use. This specific fee is coming back. We didn't have this fee previously, and they brought this fee back, so we do have to account for that. We are upgrading some security cameras in that first line item. Some of you might have heard Delaware recently had a shooting at the MB location, Kentucky had one again last year. Again, safety is paramount. And we've identified some gaps just in how we view our office both from transaction, money transaction and then just making sure we capture If that happens, we release case attachment to video. And then on the bottom balls there, we are just aligning to what we're seeing as the actual cost the current budget year. Slide now to the crosswalk again on the top section, we show that largest increase being in our contractual third party services. Is

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: there any way you can blow that up?

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: Yes a little bit.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I mean, even here on the paper, I'm looking at a younger chairman in me, and his arms aren't long.

[Unidentified Member]: Gonna have to take a picture of it.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Magnifying the glass in here.

[Unidentified Member]: I'm sure you there's nothing in there to hide while you put it in small print. Absolutely

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: not. Okay, I'm not Dallas, pops actually, not in this house. The increase on the 1,330,000.00 on contractual services. And then we have our normal salaries, wages, fringe benefits that we don't have control over, costume business. Further down, just a breakout of our operational funding. As you can see, kind of working from the bottom, repair and maintenance working out. We're just reallocating the funds to align with what we're seeing as the actual spending. Then the credit card fee from the decrease of the $1,800,000

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: that's

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: kind of a big wind up the operating.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Biggest change in this is credit card fee. Yes. And there are no new initiatives any place.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: That means we should have a few to help. Sorry.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: No. Go ahead.

[Unidentified Member]: No. I'm good. I was gonna change the conversation in a different direction. Please feel free about it if there's Thank questions about

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: you. Well, things are going well in the division, so that's terrific. Just two questions. Customers know that they're going to have to pay the transaction?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Yeah, so as we do, we're trying to do with all of our new things is broadcast that out. We get a hard time with when we can make that IT change, which is in the list to be worked on, we'll start broadcasting to have a hard day and then kind of work backwards on giving that information out to the public. So

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: then the other question is about the offices being open because people really like going to the offices, seriously. I hear that from residents, I've

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: always had a

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: good experience there because the staff are wonderful. So are you planning to reopen or open offices to the extent that they were open before COVID?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: I'm not sure what the opening was pre COVID. I know from what we have now, there are a few mobile sites. They have their set times during the week and then we have our full time sites such as Montpelier, Upper Arlington, Springfield, Rutland, Bennington, and those are five days a week.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: So the Demerston one?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: So Demerston, yeah, and that's one of the mobile units. So we have a team that will travel from, they'll start here and travel off to Southwestern. And then on those foot days, they'll be in Whitewood Junction or St. Jay.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so it'll still be part time?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Yes, yes, we'll continue.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was surprised to see that there was no recognizing of the calls for reduction in safety inspections in your budget. I think we've been hearing a lot from our constituents about the desire to move away from every year passenger vehicle inspections. And there I was kind of hoping we'd see at least like a proposal or a consideration of that in the budget. And it looks like that's not the case. I'm wondering if you could speak to if you

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: we are ready to discuss that in committee outside of the budget.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: It's a word of conversation. It's hard to pinpoint within government budget on best way of approaching it. I think there's different ways to go about this conversation.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: So you would say this not having a decrease in that budget does not reflect a willingness to have a larger conversation. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. That is very clear.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: We are excited to have that conversation.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Unidentified Member]: Thank you, chair. Just on a follow-up on that too. You know, it'd be good to have a good discussion on inspections because it's out there. There's a lot of people with a lot of opinions. And one of the things that comes back is we kind of understand how much income comes in to the DMV, but we don't really know what the costs are to run the program. And obviously, we'll need to get some folks in who provide the inspections and have discussions with them too. But I'm hoping that we're able to start to look into that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Go ahead.

[Unidentified Member]: On the fee for space, is that in any is any of the your yeah. Basically, your fees small increase for fees per space. Is that at all because of the return to office or just normal increases that BGS has given you?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: DMV is really unique. Was but I'm gonna jump in a sec, but most of our team was already in office all time. So that's not a change in, we haven't changed our posture and locations. The only change we had, we lost our lease in St. Albans going into October, so we had that quickly shift into a agency building at the old District. I'm getting the number wrong here that covers Saint Albans. So we used one of the old buildings that was on board and and did a quick conversion and

[Unidentified Member]: a variable

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: set up shop there. As far as the increase

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Renee Pouech, the

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: is strictly the in house service fund that would normally increase. So the return to office did not affect these costs. Thank you.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: So it's fairly flat over the

[Unidentified Member]: last now that you're past the presentation, huge investment. Do you see anything else on the pretty small changes for here, next year, the year after, things on the horizon, pieces, the ability to provide the service for monitors where you're at right now? Do you anticipate that to be pretty flat for the next?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: I I believe so. I don't speak about modernization as you know big 50 plus million dollar core project. I also just wanna highlight from Paul Bass for the e permitting system and that we got off the ground mid December. The second phase is our last phase to go, which is wrapping in services for local municipalities to do their overweight permits. Want a single point of one single white network there and that's been highly successful. We've been again kind of ahead of schedule with that and on budget with that program Industry, know we've been, PSM industry is part of our testing team. They've been really excited to have that deployed as well. So I think to your question, no kind of big spikes. I think the conversation around inspections is what we're kind of be in that vein, but outside of that, just providing the best service we can.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Go ahead. Oh, thank

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: you. I did just wanna know, because I think it struck me not the intent quarterly comment around security cameras, but I do just wanna understand you're investing a 100 k in the security cameras at our DMV offices with the if I understood what you said correctly, with the intent to document if there is a violent incident.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Right. And we and we have them now. It's kinda just upgrading and repositioning what we have. So so the current setup is not capturing some things that we need to capture.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: Okay. So I guess my question is more, it seems like when we wanna be investing in prevention of No, absolutely. So I'm wondering if you spoke

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: on that.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: No, I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that so I can reassure my DMV. Yeah, see what you said.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: So right now what will happen is, take one feel like a robot, one camera that covers three separate desks. And it's for the benefit of both employees and customers if there's a transaction where both on a security front and then both on a transaction front. So if there is money that's miscounted or in that A lot of times the way the camera is situated, can only either a body's blocking part of it or you see half the transaction. And this is just fixing the way the current layout at some of our offices have where the cameras are situated. So it's just improving visibility both as a safety and as a prevention.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: But I guess I missed it.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: It's not any change in what we currently have, but it's kind of fixing what we had. So it's actually doable.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: But just so I understand, you do have investments in security to prevent those and you teach folks around de escalation. Like there's a lot of work that goes into not allowing

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: those to Absolutely.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: And we work with VJ Security here in the compound outside of here, which has excellent resources. Our team is obviously the de escalation. We're war with police departments and any help that's needed.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: Thank you. I appreciate that clarification.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So I'm going to take this as a slight opportunity to play the old man here and the person that's done this a long time, you haven't been in the job very long. Normally, in a budget presentation like this, and I probably might want to, it's helpful to have an update on wait times and the customer service. Is the one chance of the full year where we get to talk about budget and we get to talk about how our constituents are being serviced as they come in. And some overall picture and upfront picture for me is helpful about that and what is going on in there. If you have anything that you can add to that, the face of STEM family for a majority of the people that we represent is DMV. We have a huge number of, and I see the secretaries up. Oh, we've

[Unidentified Member]: got a number.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: But I would say to you that for the bulk of us, if DMV isn't servicing our constituents well, we hear it. And so an update on that. The next piece, and it's a little touchier, I know that human resources does a survey of employees, their morale, what's going on and where they are, how did DMV, because the two most important things for us to hear and really know, where the DMV on a day to day basis can work well is that our constituents are being served and that the people that are working there feel good about working there. If you could give me an outlay about those two issues, that would be helpful.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Absolutely, I'll touch on the last one first. Know it came up in the secretary's opener. DMV showed on HR employee survey with a snapshot back on Wednesday, April as being part of the bottom third state government how they were out. That again, not to minimize that, but we actually showed an increase in double digit percentage points in employee satisfaction moving up. So I think that as a we're moving in the right direction. I wanna highlight that team and a lot of the threads that were in the in the opening comments on that was the team was stretched thin and that is we were we have. Probably three employees that were assigned to various city place. Had people working overtime just to make do with with keeping operations going with this current modernization, the big modernization and then e marketing process. So the team was stretched in, that is not what wasn't lost at the time, it's almost something now. And you just kind of see this breath of fresh air now, now that we're kind of past the worst of it. And I see that trajectory on between the twenty four and twenty five employee eval moving up in direction.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And there's the resources in this budget to make sure that

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Yep, just this year, one thing came out slightly after that we instituted it flowed up that frontline, so on your branch operations areas, an area that was lagging was training. It's hard to pull teams away to go to training when you have customers in the lobby and so forth. An area that we started last year, and you might see signs on some doors. One is a third Wednesday of every month. We identified that as being the slowest time historically for DMV offices. We opened an hour later during that time and it allows supervisors to meet with teams directly, update our training stuff, just get make sure everyone's operating the same page. Instead of doing piecemeal trainings, some people are hearing some things, might have a different question in a different group, but the first group doesn't hear it. And that has been really positive and instrumental change for the department. And then something I'd like to replicate if possible since we were closed for the modernization, we had a day, we had an employee celebration with the entire department, which sort of not able to employ everyone in from all the branch offices. And that was just those little small things on top of just making sure employees have a voice enabled to address concerns and management and hear management kind of the direction we're going. So we are eye on that and that's a priority. I said that to both committees when I first started and that's been a priority for me because the team knows that and we are making sure employees are, I mean that's our greatest resource. The ones when Senator Ehrlichman said you're a great transaction, your daughter had to do the driver's test. That's the pace people see. And that's what we wanna make sure we are appreciating those employees, to the extent we can. To your first question on wait times, so if you come in with it, if you make an appointment

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And I mean this just general, give us a picture of the service levels for people and are people happy coming in?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Yes, absolutely. Employees or public?

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Of the public.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Public, yes. We're all

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: here to serve the The

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: public as a whole has been extremely appreciative of changes in the work that the team does. Just yesterday, I received an email, just a random email from the public. This customer is commenting that she made an appointment for 09:50 at Montpelier. Got parking, came in and was out the door by 09:10 with the entire transaction completed. And she was extremely ecstatic and thankful for that. That's not out of the norm. We've been hearing a lot of great comments with the new system, with the new scheduling system. I know we touched on last year, it showed a slight increase in the time that a customer might be at the counter. But I think it's important to notate that customer's walking out with all the documents in hand instead of being there for just a couple minutes less, but having to wait six weeks for that mail to come through with a title, registration documents, the license we still have to print unfortunately, the actual license itself. But you will have a temporary license if that's what you're in for services. So we're seeing if you have an appointment almost instantaneous being served at the window. If you don't have an appointment, and we try to broadcast to the public, please make an appointment. If you're on a tight timeline, reach out, we'll try to get you in. And the reason for that is, again, just that what the first story I just told about the customer that had emailed me. We can get you in immediately. A lot of the the work on the back end of the system is already processed, documents, and so When you come up, it's a short, very short window that you're interacting face to face and then we can get the person here. Certainly if you are walking, we will take walk ins and we do, it's just we can't control the time frame. I think it's probably about forty minutes or so on average for wait time. But we won't so service people that walk in, we do advocate for people to pay an appointment. We're trying to amplify that as much.

[Unidentified Member]: On that, what day did you collect on that? So you say you have time on how much, you have data on how much time to spend at the counter? Do you have overall wait times? Do you have

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: So we have a weekly breakout that happens per week that I get.

[Unidentified Member]: What Is it total wait time and total wait time at the desk? Do you have other data? Or is that the only two?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: No. It's Yeah. It's a wait times, different types of transactions, percent news increase, call volumes.

[Unidentified Member]: I think it was last year. Mean, guess you weren't here the year before. So we talked about, is there any effort to reach out like a survey? Because you're getting these letters. I assume you get people that are mad and happy that send you letters or emails. I wonder if there's anything else DMV had done to try to see what their reaction is. Like a customer survey, you had this reaction with DMV, give us a score, give us something. So it's more random.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: We have a rate card which we try to populate into the system. I just got classier doing a online, if you're our portal, customer satisfaction survey that's there. When I brought that up with the team, again, was the middle of the organization and I was told not right now. So that is on our it is on the list for something. It's just kind of one thing too many.

[Unidentified Member]: Think that would be helpful information to Senator Westman's point. Those that are interacting, what is their general feel?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Would be great. You.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Hello, Mr. Scherer. What is the average wait time to get if someone reaches out to get an appointment, what is the timeframe for getting an appointment?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Kind of the exact metrics on it, it varies on the type of transaction as well.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I wondered about that.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: But prior to December, it was pushed out quite a ways. I mean, we're seeing people with up to sixty days. We have that number significantly down to now. I don't want to give you exact metric, but it's significantly within a couple weeks at most getting it going. Can

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: we get the numbers? Can we get your week? I mean, don't need a weekly, but it would be nice to see like a Yeah, snapshot.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Budget is our one time a year where we get and the most important things we do is service to the public. And your desk is one of the most public places that our constituents come to. So some idea of how that's going and the dealing with that. I've been here when back in the day, nobody here will remember Bonnie Rutland, when Bonnie came, there were wait times that were huge, and we were all getting yelled at because every office was full. And it's one of the most unpleasant things you can go through in state government to have multiple constituents calling you saying, I waited and I drove all the way to Montpelier, Burlington or wherever it was to do that. So it's helpful to know how it's going with our constituents.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Absolutely. I'll give that a shot.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Representative Burke. Yeah, I just wanna I wanna thank you, Commissioner, for your help with my constituent who had when he went to Denver's gym. He found out that he just was put in line with other people. The appointment didn't really matter, so I don't know if that's getting sorted out or whatever, but you just put in a line that said you just come there randomly. Just wanna make you aware of that.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: No, thank for that detail. I would say prior to December, we've improved signage too. I tried testing this to how it's on Burlington, where we didn't have a clear signage that if you had an appointment, you don't have to wait in the line. And so we've improved against signage and it's just we're trying to do a very good job in maintaining the improvements that have been made. Have you ever seen that?

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: Well, I know that we're talking about your budget and not necessarily just your revenue sources, but I did want to ask if you had thought of any creative revenue sources within the programs you have already existing. I've heard conversations about if we changed the cap for certain types of vehicles and the amount that you would have to spend to register like a RV or something that you are seeing folks choose to register or get their vehicles squared away in other states because our fees are high. But perhaps if we reduced the overall fee, we'd have more revenue because people are coming over to our state to register. So a a lower amount per transaction, but overall higher transactions because folks are choosing to have that type of vehicle registered in state or getting its proper documentation state. Did you consider any changes to either the caps that we have on large RVs or even some commercial vehicles to try to actually have the effect of getting more revenue, perhaps?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: No. On that thread, I we discussed this in house. We are trying to find use what we already have and make sure we're tightening

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: up on what is on the books.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: For example, I brought up the temporary registration for paper plates that came out during COVID-nineteen months. When we started looking at that internally we found that I think since its inception there's over 200,000 plates issued. Of that only two thirds of those translated into someone coming in directly to the vehicle. And then we were starting to get a lot of communications from surrounding states on the issue they're seeing with Vermont, these paper plates on vehicles in their states. So I worked with our legal and was advised that as long as we're working on it fixed for that program, I could pause that program. So we paused that program towards the end of the year. We have a work order if that's in to make a change that would require Vermonters to pay all fees upfront in order to be able to print that paper plate. But we were seeing again, not We started getting a lot of from the forms. People were selling vehicles that said, this has a new $6 paper plate and just re up this under someone else's name and it'd be good to drive. And that wasn't a one off out. We had several. And I think many colleagues reached out to me over the summer as well stating that they were having trouble, a lot of comments on seeing these paper plates. So that is an area think directly to your point was revenue being missed. Missing out purchase use, missing out your registration fees, and so I think you're just taking an avenue attacked of what we have on books and seeing if that would solve what.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation)]: And I also see that it's not in your budget, although the Senate passed it. We have a forestry industry that is struggling considerably. And there is a whole piece of legislation we work that maybe house transportation will be excited about, around reducing some of the costs for our loggers who are transporting. I don't see that reflected in your budget.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Right. And we don't have that as in our FY '27. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. So I guess we have one more.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Two things really quickly. I just want to say, I think it was a great move to pass the credit card fees on to customers. I know that nobody likes NFTY, but it seemed like that was the main group that I think it's customary for customers to know that they are paying those fees in other areas. So nice job. And then on the modernization project, which was expensive and big, and it looks like it's been a great change for DMV. Could you just review for us the communication plan that DMV took on or is taking on to communicate this amazing new system to the public so they know all the benefits of it, how to access

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: Absolutely, I don't have any talk points on that, but we teamed up, it started prior to my arrival in the initial phase that rolled out with a communications marketing firm that developed communications around the deployment of the different phases of the system. So that was a little different last summer, we started in early summer, we had communications plan to the public. We wanted to know we're gonna be closed, but then how do you utilize the new system and what benefits were that were coming with the new system. Since then, that's the changes or errors that we use. We use our social media team at the department and they have that, I mean it's flashing, reaching million people and it's really now since we're done through that operational deployment phase, it's all kind of in house reminding monitors make appointments or benefits of that system. So did

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: it mostly get social media?

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: At this point, yes. And then through our website, if there's significant changes,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: we got the planners.

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: I know over the fall we got along with most all DMV's in The US, the spam for the Yeah, you were. Yeah, had that toll bill they had to pay. So we worked, I know it was a weekend or a team was working on a weekend to make sure you have data on social media,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: the parking reasons went out in public for

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: awareness. And that's something that we continue doing and we always do.

[Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I don't recall seeing anything like that,

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: but it could be me. And just a reminder that social media, I think, is a great tactic for younger but there are older Vermonters who aren't really familiar with social media or don't want to be. So from which forums, even our local newspapers, I think, are also great ways to communicate with all members of the public.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: you much for your testimony today. And congrats on the implementation and modernization program. You could have

[Unidentified Member]: used an opportunity to talk about all the work you did with the license renewals last year at

[Unidentified Member]: the

[Andrew Collier (Commissioner of DMV)]: request of these