Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: And we're back on Wednesday, 02/04/2026. A little short session on committee discussion, but specifically on two areas. The second one would be the bill we were supposed to drive by yesterday, and it obviously turned into some significant we weren't aware of that program, etcetera. So that's our second agenda. First agenda item is that Amtrak had asked for a letter of support. Then we had to draft one that said, I wanted to make sure you guys were all aware of it and know what it was for. And I asked our legislative council to look at it and then to draft the response. I don't know if it should just really come from the chair or should come from the whole committee.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Anyway, that's know who we are. They read the letters. Yeah, they

[Speaker 0]: don't know who I am in rain. But I do know this, people like Amtrak. So I got no trouble in responding. I don't take too much of a, you know, what is it? Tell me anything you want, just not leaked in there? Totally yes. I spell my name with the two Ts and not an R and A. So I guess you could walk us real quickly on what the request was, what the response was, and if anybody has any comments. I just want you to be aware of it and assuming that we're good to go with it.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So for the record, I'm Damon Leonard from the Office of Legislative Counsel. So we got a request from Amtrak. And just to take you back a little bit, what Amtrak's in the process of doing is if you're familiar with the trains on our Ethan Allen or Vermonter lines, those the engines date back to the nineties. The train cars are older, also decades old. And for the state supported lines that Amtrak runs and some of its long distance trains, beginning back in the early 2020s, possibly earlier. But in the early twenty twenties, they finalized a contract with Siemens for a new train set called the Arrow, AIRO, which is it's a it can be a dual mode diesel electric train set. So basically for our run on the Vermonter, it's diesel in Vermont. And when it gets down to Connecticut where it joins the Northeast Corridor and you've got the overhead electric lines, it switches over to electric. So you don't have to switch engines like you do currently.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, you have to switch engines.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so that alone saves about twenty, twenty five minutes on the trip to New York from anywhere in Vermont. But they're in the process of purchasing these train sets. So they've made the initial purchase of 83 train sets, and they're currently applying for an additional grant to purchase, I believe let's see. I'm looking at an email from Amtrak here. They're looking to purchase additional train sets, and I don't believe that they have the number written out in here. The new trains are gonna start entering service beginning this year. The estimates I've heard for Vermont are that we'll see them in about three years in 2029 or so.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Cool. I

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: think he had some testimony, and that question was asked about the new when are we getting the new trains? And I think it was two or three years out. Right.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the reason they wanna ask for additional trains is that if they can have more trains in the fleet, they have less issues with downtime. So basically, you have more redundancy built in. So when a train has to go in for maintenance, they've got the trains, and they don't have to do service disruptions. So they asked Vermont to send in a letter of support. And I'll pull that letter up in just a second here. And that letter would go over to the Federal Railroad Administration asking them to support Amtrak's application, which is going to be finalized on Friday. So this letter has to go out this week.

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

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: let me pull that up. And I took the letter here primarily from a template that they sent, which was based on a letter for Pennsylvania. I changed changed a few things around in the letter since we are not Pennsylvania. But you may see language in here that you feel is not Vermont specific enough, and so we can make edits as we go through. And we can also discuss discuss the trains overall. I know a little bit about the differences between the two trains, but I'm not an expert. So I can try to answer questions. Let me just share my screen. Great. Can everybody see that? Okay. So the letter would go to the Federal Railroad Administration's administrator, David Fink, And it would state and it's I wrote it on behalf of the chair. We could change this to to on behalf of the committee, but I'm it's basically from representative Walker on behalf of the full committee. So I'm writing to express the house committee on transportation strong support for the grant application being submitted by Amtrak in partnership with a coalition of state supported intercity passenger rail sponsors for the National Railroad Partnership Program or NRPP funding to procure additional rolling stock for state supported services. This collaborative application reflects Amtrak's close working relationship with states across the country and its commitment to acquiring the equipment needed to maintain and expand passenger rail service into the future. Sorry.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So is Amtrak I'm assuming Amtrak is all the way Amtrak, all across the country, is requesting the grant from who?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Federal Railroad Administration. Oh. So they're two different entities.

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

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And the Federal Railroad Administration has grant funding, which my understanding is that it could go to someone like Amtrak. It could also go to states or to other regional rail providers. Could go free? I don't know about that.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So it doesn't alright. So Amtrak is applying for this. We've I I'm assuming we already got some a few years ago because that's why we're getting new train sets. Now this is an additional fund request. Is it just for Vermont's Amtrak, or

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is it for more than Vermont? So my understanding is that Amtrak is requesting this money to buy more of the train sets generally so that it can then deploy them around. So these will be used from coast to coast. Their Northeast Corridor, the Vermonter, the Empire State, Ethan Allen. And then on the West Coast, you're seeing it on, like, the Cascadia line and so forth. So they're used on multiple multiple lines. The majority of the trains they bought are the diesel electric. I think about 10 of the first 83 are just regular diesel for use in the parts of the country where there are no overhead electric lines or the catenary. So I'm looking now at the National Railroad Partnership Program, it says it provides funding for capital projects that reduce the state of good repair backlog, improve performance, or expand or establish new intercity passenger rail service, including privately operated intercity passenger rail service, which would be like the Bright Line in Florida, if the ineligible applicant is involved. So this could be projects to repair things like infrastructure, projects to improve performance, like reducing trip times, increasing train frequencies, allowing for higher operating speeds, the extending lines so they reach further, etcetera. So there are proposals in other parts of the country, for example, to reconnect cities that have been taken off lines in the past. So I know Wisconsin is trying to extend the lines from their capital out to other cities in the state and so forth. I think there was money used from these programs in the past to upgrades to the underlying rails so the trains could run faster over them by improving the rail that itself, welding rails together, etcetera.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And so both the senate transportation committee and the house,

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: will we write separate letters? This one seems like So both committees were requested to write this letter. I've only been asked to draft a letter for this committee. I don't know whether the Senate Committee is sending a letter or anything like that or not.

[Speaker 0]: I don't know the answer to that. I assume that's the most people on the committee. I didn't know that. Representative Casey is up to next, and they're not gonna break that. Definition question. What what do you

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: mean by train sets? So the train

[Speaker 0]: brings me back to when I was

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: a kid. It's put a smile on my face.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But So train set. Yeah. So when you think a train set is both the locomotive, the engine, and also the cars itself. So the the engine on the aero, like I said, it's dual fuel electric diesel. In diesel mode, it has lower emissions. So when it's idling in the station, the air quality is better. It can also run about 20 to 25 miles an hour faster than the current engines. It's also a different style slightly different style engine. It's more modern style. The train cars themselves, as I understand it, feature larger windows, more modern seating, better Wi Fi, better electrics so you can plug in at your seat, etcetera. So they're just being modernized from the last generation where a lot of the amenities that you're used to now in the train had to be retrofitted like Wi Fi and so forth. So the train set means the whole thing, Yeah, to exactly. So like when you're a kid and you buy the box and it's got the engine and the train cars And the caboose. And the caboose.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: It's flying bald trains. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: I'm sorry. Representative White was up next, and then you can jump in and jump in. Sorry.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Okay. So Damian, so you said this is basically a suggested letter that they included, that you're a bit.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So they sent a suggested letter. I rewrote it so that it was personalized for this committee with the bullet points are their suggested bullet points plus one.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: K. Just looking

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: at the bullet points. Like, it seems to me that the the most compelling points are serve you know, greater rely service reliability and time savings, decreasing the time it takes to travel. But maybe that's When I'm looking at the bullet points, those two things kinda seem to be the most compelling to me if I were looking at this and trying to decide grants. In terms of the letter, I think it would be strongest if it were from the chair on behalf of the whole committee. And I would also recommend that we invite the Senate Committee to join this letter so that it is really from both chairs on behalf of both committees.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Or ask them the right thing.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And it could certainly be redrafted so that it's from both committees, or I could write a separate letter for them if if that's what the senate committee wants.

[Speaker 0]: Representative McCoy and representative Patterson?

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Just a comment that it went to chair of work. Was like, he went to somebody. He might have just not even seen it, but believe that Patricia might not have seen it at all.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It went to the committee assistant down So there as I think Megan forwarded it to you.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Right? To you, chair.

[Speaker 0]: Forwarded to you. Exactly.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I assume they're aware of it down there, but I I like I said, I haven't spoken to anyone in the committee about this.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: If we could just add your continued commitment to our ancillary with Bennington, that's perfect. You need a lot of stuff. Done.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: You got a couple extra trains now.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And two, representative Pouech and then representative Burke. Yeah. I think my question's changed, but I I would go along with Representative White that it would be great if both the Senate and the House had one request together. And I don't know, we need to reach out to the Senate and say, hey, got this on your make sure you dust it off. How many more days we got until that's Friday. The Friday. Yeah. Yeah. That's it.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, the letter's written subject to any changes that you wanna make. But

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: And then we have cover behind the chair.

[Speaker 0]: Doctor. Chittendenburg?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I am happy to go to my colleague, Sandra Harrison, who's a big rail fan. And just, is up,

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: is is your care.

[Speaker 0]: If you want to forward it down there, or whatever you want, I'm, like,

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: if you're referring don't to I'm

[Speaker 0]: saying if you're offering to communicate with our senate colleagues and ask them if they're planning on taking any action.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I think that she would. You're our

[Speaker 0]: letter, they have about twenty four hours to decide.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: She would definitely want to. One other thing I'm

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: happy to have for that outreach, if you want

[Speaker 0]: to go track her down or email her. Have that, I appreciate the offer.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I don't know

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: whether, this is a fine misletter, I just wonder whether, you know, there is such an interest in this committee in rail, that I wonder if you should just emphasize that we have a committee, or people in Vermont, or something to sort of say, know, not only do we support this, but we're like, do this without it. Send us.

[Speaker 0]: And that's why I didn't pass it over.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: That's just a suggestion, an editing suggestion, you don't have to do it. The letter's fine.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Ridership is going up in Vermont. It wouldn't be bad to, you know, I don't know what else we would put in the letter, but we want to put as much as we can. And I'm guessing this is an outright grant. There's no match money, you know?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So looking at the website here,

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: trying to

[Speaker 0]: While you're looking that up, can say that I did reach out to the agency, and they said they they had been asked for support. They did do something as an agency to say that they support it with no commitment to any they did not commit to any financial match money or anything else because that's too far out. And there is the project you specifically mentioned that needs to receive testimony on. This is the next generation after that, as you mentioned. But they wrote a letter in support or told them peace in support, but without any financial commitments, as of course they will need our financial commitments.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Representative Cope. We don't own the trade. You can't track those, so why would we have a match?

[Speaker 0]: I'm pretty sure we've spent some state money to keep that up. That's why it says state subsidized. So the statement's right there. State supported. I'm sorry. Now it's state supported. It's no longer subsidized. It's supportive. Representative Casey? No. No. No.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So Yeah. I don't see anything about local match on the website, but I do need to just be clear. I'm looking at just a home page and not not details on this. So it does look like the money that's available here is money that was pulled back from other grant programs, which is now being repurposed. But there's additional money that can go to purchase these train sets here. I think yeah, it looks like there's about $5,000,000,000 available for these grants. The grants can go to states, to interstate compacts, to public agencies, political subdivisions, Amtrak, either acting on its own or as part of a cooperative agreement with states, federally recognized Indian tribes, and any combination of those entities working together. So it looks like Amtrak's viable, and then we do have two lines that will be benefited by this, which is, I assume, why they've reached out to us for a statement of support. Getting back to the draft. So the bullets here track a lot of the things that the grants are supposed to be for. So it's improving the state of good repair, reducing operating and maintenance, increasing reliability, and providing passengers with modern safety features and amenities. The you know, the these are thirty to forty year newer models. They're supposed to run more quickly. They're supposed to be designed for being relatively easy to maintain, although that always comes with a, you know, caveat. So the the improvements in the letter would directly support the continued success of Vermont's state supported services, the Vermonter and Ethan Allen. And we could say, you know, service to Bennington.

[Speaker 0]: I'll just put it over the time. Yeah. Guarantee. And

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: additional train sets will increase equipment availability, allowing for potential service expansion, more frequent trains, and improved schedule flexibility. Given that we have one train each way each day, I'm not sure how much schedule flexibility that is, but this was in the form letter. So I don't know if you want to leave that in.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: We're gonna have another trade.

[Speaker 0]: I would suggest that the schedule is incredibly flexible, because it arrives anywhere from on time to hours and hours.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Are you waiting there

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: to say all those things, right?

[Speaker 0]: I ride it, I like it, I think it's great, and we need to keep it. However, it is certainly flexible. Been

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: teaching Vermonters to be flexible for years and years.

[Speaker 0]: And

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: then this will directly benefit Vermont or strengthen the state's economy by boosting tourism across Vermont, improving access to health care for residents who rely on inner city passenger rail. This was in the form letter. I'm not sure how pertinent this is to us. Improving Vermonters access to cities along the Northeast Corridor. That was what I added as sort of an alternative to the health care language and expanding job access and economic opportunities for Vermont communities served by Amtrak. So I wasn't sure how comfortable you would be with this language from the form letter. And I thought the statement below it is at least self evident. So but it's up to you because or if there are other things I'm leaving out.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: How how sensitive is the person that you're sending the letter to? I think it pretty much covers it. It sounds pretty good. We could Yeah. Send along a whippmann sampler or something too. Yeah. Not enough to deal with.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. A big concern. Yep.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The the next paragraph is all about Buy America. I do yep. I do wanna note that although the parts are produced in, I believe, 31 states, I don't think Vermont is one of those states, unfortunately. So but I left the language in since it's helpful when you're talking to a national government. And then the last paragraph kinda sums up. We fully support the application and think it'll lead to meaningful improvements in service in Vermont and across the country.

[Speaker 0]: So This one. This map will help you. Yep. On the South? I know you're talking

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: about. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Can't try to get some donors out of park. Get the expense of the state supported.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Know? That sounds like it's subsidized. Green Mountain flyer.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Take all prejudice.

[Speaker 0]: Does anybody have an objection to the letter going out? I don't if anybody in favor of taking the letter out. Any other changes you want to make?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: No. But I think we should approach the senate. If we can do one letter for both, would be better. I wrote

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: her. I wrote her. Already.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: All right,

[Speaker 0]: okay. So I would say that we're as a committee very comfortable with, if they want to add, then you can add them appropriately to the same letter. If they don't, please make sure it goes out on time either way. I think everybody would be comfortable with that, right? We want the letter If go out on the Senate wants to join it, we certainly, I think, are capable of having the Senate piece without it coming back to the committee, but you can add the Senate, just let us know which one ended up happening. Just make sure that whatever they decide, the letter goes out in time to meet whatever deadline this week. That would be my instructions on behalf of the committee if everybody sort of nods to that. I would say, number one, it's gotta be on time, and it's from us. That's great. If the ascendant joins, that would be better. But we wanna be on time.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So I'm gonna send a clean copy to you and Gabby just in case because I think we probably wanna have your signature on us. Although, I can just do the little slash with an s. Happy to you as well. I

[Speaker 0]: don't have an auto pen here. But

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: but yeah. And then if if they would prefer to do differently, I can change the the formatting so it

[Speaker 0]: comes from both. Okay. Representative?

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: And just to clarify, are we relying on representative Burke to reach out to representative Harrison. Harrison? And that will be our invitation to the Senate. That's our plan? Or, just the chair, wanna I mean, just ask the chair.

[Speaker 0]: I will send him a text and see if we can catch him and all is well.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And this is Yeah. Lionel train sets. We should see if they can send us one of the new Aero trains that we can put out Any

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: we can put

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: that as

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: If we start this if

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: we send us a model

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: And we're going subtract, too. There's a wire rope I was in, but he

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: put his

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: tracks all around inside of his bar area. And he had an old set. We had the old

[Speaker 0]: controller there. Yeah. It's a wide range. Yeah. It's out. Oh, was it Chris? Is it HO or

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: What is

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: that? What was that? Was it an old gauge? No. It's just a wider one.

[Rep. Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Would be old. I I had a double o

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: when I was young.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Know that one. Not those old files. Anyway, we

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can talk about this when we're not online. And I

[Speaker 0]: did get confirmation that the end of the labourers and the railroad and whatnot, the OT is totally in support of all of the language that's drafted. So I just came through. I had sent it to them and asked them to comment. And they are totally on board. That's where I learned what they've sent. Well, previously, I learned that they had sent a letter without any commitment of money. So we got our plan. I've texted Senator Westman. You've contacted Senator Harrison. If they join, you'll adopt a letter. If they don't, you'll make sure it goes out on time. That's right. Perfect. Thank you all very much for that. Appreciate the feedback and the support of rail across the whole committee, most of the committee anyway. Can't I speak for everybody. Yesterday, drive by is not something we do a whole lot of. And we certainly dug into section 24 of H-six 32 yesterday. And I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to answer or how we're going to answer. The chair is out and the committee of natural resources, I guess, what her environment proficient. I said it wrong the other day and I say it wrong again. I don't look at it either way. But as far as we were asked to do this drive by, I think we went a little more in-depth maybe or not. But obviously there's some serious questions in that. Committee on environment, yes. Some pretty serious questions about that program. I don't know what our options are. Guess this is framed up eventually a question to Damien or a question to the committee. I'm not very sure exactly what we're going do about it now. We were supposed to do a drive by on just that one section of H-six 32 that we did yesterday, and then it was brought up again into discussion today. I did ask our JFO to look at exactly where the money has come from and how much money is spent. And if any of it is T fund money, which we could take some level of action on if we wanted to as a committee. But I don't have the answers he is going to give us that. But I guess my real question is on a drive by and in this scenario, what's the normal procedure and what are our options? Whether I'm asking the question directed to some seniority or asking the question directed to the alleged counsel, we are in committee discussion so you could do both. What are our options when it comes to something like this? Clearly, there's strong feelings about that program and its effectiveness and whether it needs to be changed. I don't know what usually happens in a drive by Oh, yeah, we got two

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: options in my mind. Obviously, we could go along with the change on having harp on with that so we could concur what the agency is trying to do. But then the second question would be, we agree with it, but let's forget it because it's not effective. And that's the second question. You had a discussion on that, this program's worthwhile. It doesn't seem like the data is bearing any fruit yet. However, you have no question about the waivers. We did that, so we would have a transition once they did waive the waivers. It sounds like they may or may not be going away in a couple months. But if they do go away a couple months, was there an understanding to have this program for that transition and offering them? So that's, you know, I don't know if that's our call to get rid of it, but we did establish the program, right? So I guess we do have jurisdiction on one and half, we wanna do that. But if we do do that, then that's a lot more testimony to get in to see what the ramifications are on that, maybe with the EPA or just what that's all about. But the initial drive by, I I'm personally finding the change, but then through the programming and the incentives, know, with the money sitting there, because it sounds like just north of $800,000 that's in there. Yeah, that'd be my 2¢ of how we sort of handle it. Is

[Speaker 0]: there any other options in terms of what we would normally have for this procedure, or anybody that's done more drive by than what we've done? Yeah, assume other comments from the committee. Will push it to you first and to anybody else.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Usually in drive bys, there's a couple of different outcomes. One is the committee says, green light, no problems. Two, the committee says, we're not comfortable with the language. Don't put it in. And three, they say, we'd be comfortable with the following amendments. What's left out of that and the bigger question is if you're not comfortable with the program itself, usually in the drive bys I've done, it hasn't been a question of repealing a program. So we have existing law and it's being proposed to be changed or proposing a new law and it overlaps with your jurisdiction. In the latter case, there's often amendments from that committee that has overlapping jurisdiction. In the earlier case, it's not unusual to have a lot of committee concerns about the existing program. But then the question becomes, what do you do with the language that's in front of you? And then what do you do going down the road? And you would likely if you are thinking repeal the program now, you would likely need to talk that out with the committee that actually has possession of that bill. That said, you could also look at repealing or modifying that program as part of the T bill, which is where it was enacted in 2021. So this was created as part of the T bill back in 2021. And that could be a place where you look at making changes to or repealing the program or limiting the funding. And Logan has more answers on the money aspect of it. But very often, it's just those three questions of Okay with no changes, Okay with changes, or not Okay, period. But in this case, not Okay, period just means that you leave it the way it is. And then you could potentially, in the T bill, unless you get buy in from house environment, you could look at repealing or modifying it in the T bill. With buy in from house environment, you could also look at that now. I don't know what their schedule is like at this point or how soon they want an answer. And that often also affects how these things move in terms of the drive fives.

[Speaker 0]: Representative what, Tomlinson?

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, my comment is I'm in agreement with Representative Corcoran that changes in the language seem fine. But I think the bigger issue, I'll speak for myself, but I also was paying attention to other members yesterday. I felt like that was a program that was just indicative of government not working. Money that was sitting around for four or five years, that going through all these iterations, they ended up giving out three actual grants. It just seemed like, So to me, maybe we write a memo and say, the language change is fine, but the bigger concern from our committee is that this really seems like a program that is not working and has taken a lot of time to prove that it's really not working. The alternative situation, we don't want to get into the business of figuring out an alternative. We think about the alternative as this was supposed to get rid of the waiver program to allow people low income to get their cars fixed to reduce emissions. But it just really seemed to be poor implementation. So I have a really hard time saying I support this program.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Keyser?

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: I would echo Representative White's comments. It also occurs to me that there's maybe a fourth option, but if we don't provide funding for that on an ongoing basis, it'll buy, right?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so right now it has one time funding. And they have quite a bit of funding left over, though, at this point. I can't remember the exact numbers, but they do have one time funding. So they're not asking for additional funding at this point, is what I understood from the testimony yesterday. But they have enough leftover that it would see them through.

[Rep. Chris Keyser (Member)]: My second point is that they don't want to administer inside the agency. So they want to get a third party out there. That's going to increase their cost also. So that makes it more irrelevant. And then my last comment is waivers. How is it that people get waivers? Is it based on income? I mean, I hear nothing about just that we get waivers. So A lot of

[Speaker 0]: discussions, nobody answers, nobody answers. Don't know why. If somebody knows the answer, those discussions, you can try to answer it if you

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: want Wasn't this something to do with

[Speaker 0]: the national poverty? So you get a waiver to not fix it if you don't have the money to fix it? What happens at the end of the year? I believe it

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: is income based verification for waivers, for the one year, and you can do it once. There was a lot of noise, I'm not saying no points, but a lot of concern about how do we fix emission lights, because now it seems like the average lights was coming on, and then you had the lower income bracket, people said, Who can't afford $2,000 to $3,000 You just can't do it. So then there was this program where we were allowed to give out waivers to the EPA, the federal government, So, but we were gonna phase that out. And when we were talking about phasing it out, there were some, I think this originated in the Senate, this program, I recall, that they wanted an offering, and hence the admissions program to get the subsidies to sort of take care of that. Obviously, they kept not doing the waivers. I I was under pressure, and that's what was going be done a while ago. There's still two. So, like you said, broken down on functional government. Flagman doesn't know what

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the other hand's doing, of course.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: But, yeah, my major concern now is that it's $800,000 If you do get away with this waiver, we're going to burn through that money, I think, relatively quickly. So we're setting up a program that has no funding, and that people are going to expect us to come to the table and fund it. And what are we going to do? Sorry. You know, should we just nip it in the bud now before we eliminate this waiver and people are going be lined up to do it? Or do we find a source to say, yeah, no, seriously, we're behind this, we're gonna, you know, do whatever. There's a revenue source and this is a big, you know, important problem. You know, those are discussions that we have to have,

[Speaker 0]: but I think that can be

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: a discussion that probably is worthwhile to have, at least with us or

[Speaker 0]: the better checkers. The JFO is going to bring us back whose money started it and whose money is the funding and who has the $800,000 I heard the initial funding was T funds and the remainder to build up to that was the general fund money, so that part's there. We're gonna

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

[Speaker 0]: Representative Lalley, Representative Burke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, thank you.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: I guess I'm wondering how big of a problem is this? I know it has been a big problem, but it's not something that you hear a lot about. It just occurs to me that you don't hear that much about it anymore, and I don't know the reason for that. Is it something that is captured when somebody goes through just basic maintenance? Is it our car's gotten better? It might be worth hearing from people who know about this as to just the scale or the magnitude of the problem in terms of making a decision about what to do about it. Because I, you know, it can be quite an annoying thing and these things can be hard to figure out why that light keeps coming on, but, you just don't hear people saying that this is

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: a big problem in the way that you used to.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, well I

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: think they're getting partly because they're getting the waivers. There's 500 plus people that have received these waivers. So that's part of it, they're satisfied. If they took away with that waiver,

[Speaker 0]: and then there's no money to do it,

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I think that we'll start getting

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: a lot of attention

[Speaker 0]: Representative this Bourke?

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, I'm sorry, missed this testimony yesterday, but I'm sort of trying to remember this. I think originally we were trying to deal with this because Vermont, is it still an ozone transport zone? I mean, is that

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, that's set in federal law.

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, and so we had to meet certain emission standards, and we had negative tool, we're a lot talking about this, and yet we were trying to figure out how we could help low income people, even to fix their emissions, because actually the OBD life was actually the emissions, the life that told that your emissions were not in line with what needed to be done. So I can't talk anymore about that, just trying to get a little constructive perspective on that.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: I missed Do

[Speaker 0]: repeat you want that? Yeah.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I think it only helped out three people. So it's like, I mean, for the money that was spent, we could have bought each one of them a car. So it's like, I just don't see any reason. This is the epitome of what people think about government. I just it just seems from a layman's view, it just looks like a, you know, a lousy a lousy deal. I wouldn't wanna continue it whether it had good intentions or not. I just and that money could be used somewhere else. I hate to even see the program finish it. You know, who knows what's it going to take ten ten years to finish out the program at the rate it's going. We could take that money and use it somewhere even if it's not transportation. Mean,

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I said, I don't

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: know where it came from, and I don't know how the recourse works on that. But this seems like a crazy idea. It's like, here we are worth $33,000,000 short and then I hear of this program. I just kind of, you know, the the the the right was right up there. You could see it was like, wow, it's like, that's crazy. So, I'm definitely not for continuing this program. Representative Pouech? Yeah, I would

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: think that seems to be working. Mean, I think we need to understand though how the state can give out waivers and not meet the federal standards, you know? So there's a lot of questions here.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, it's gotta be these waivers just run out for time. Like, they've got them expired, who's looking at those?

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Don't know. Yeah, mean, are you given x amount of waivers and then we've used them up? It seems like there's a lot of information we don't know. And I'd agree, I mean, the surface, doesn't seem like the program's working.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Wells, and then we'll wrap it up and move on to our other part on Yeah.

[Rep. Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: I'm with Phil. There's more questions being asked. They can fix that emission problem, but those cars got a lot more problems than that. Several too, and hardly none qualify. I just why throw good money after buy it? Just nip it and move on.

[Speaker 0]: Danny, did you have a final comment on this?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I just wanted to note that I checked the waiver program on the website. According to DMV's website, they're ending the program as of the ninth of this month. So they have a notice up that when your time extension waiver expires, you have to get reinspected and you won't be able to get another one. But that's all I've got to add. Yeah.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So we just need

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: the ramifications of that. We do. What I'll

[Speaker 0]: do right now, at least I'm suggesting to everyone I'm planning on doing. I'm not looking for I'm gonna go back to representative Chapin who asked me to ask us to do the drive by and go back to the committee on the environment and see what we ran into and say, we'll share what we learned, what we said, and see where they're at. And then when Logan comes or when GFO comes back with the actual money of where it's at, we'll make sure the committee gets it. Then I'll update them on what we found. And then we'll figure out what the next piece would be. So kind of amazing. Well, put that on the potential language for our alleged counsel who hears it. He may have to work on repeal language to put into the TV bill. But we also have to recognize that we don't run the emissions piece and whatnot and what there was out there. So anyway, I'll go back to the committee for now and we'll take the testimony when they get it and we will see where it comes from that committee piece. And we're going to deal with vehicles for quite a bit of time and usually in the second half. If we

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: did get to that point, I think if we did want to make major changes, we would officially request the bill, not have the

[Speaker 0]: right buy. So that's

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: how the bill would come here.

[Speaker 0]: Because on a drive by, don't technically have a jurisdiction of it. We'd have to ask to bring it over and then say, we're going to dig into this section. The bill's got a whole bunch of other stuff going on that isn't our jurisdiction, but this section is. So we'd have to have possession of it to make any changes. Or we then have another option of looking at what we would do to the T bill at some point or not if we were doing something through there. So we're going back to the committee with what we found and see what their committee opinion is on it. And we will also get the rest of the information on exactly what the money is and where we're going from. So from that, we're going to move on to the maybe I misread that part. Yeah, we're going to the 02:00 testimony. It looks like the schedule may have adjusted a little bit. I think we're onto the T Bill. Is Jeremy, and we're onto the T Bill portion of kind of running the agency's feedback on the sections on the T Bill that we did. Damian did our walk through for us last week, last Friday, I think it was. And now we're getting the agency's testimony on the sections that they have comments on over the next hour here and questions and back and forth. The overall goal is to make sure we understand what's, hopefully Damon explained to us, what they're asking for or what the language says. And now we're going to hear why the agency wants it and what's the impact of it. And then we need to figure out who else we might need to write in that could be impacted. So that's the lens we're looking at here is, do we fully understand it? Why do you need this change? And then who could be impacted by it for any additional testimony that we might need? That sound about right? Yeah. Alrighty. Welcome back, dear. We appreciate your extended time with us. And I guess we're starting on the 2027 T bill from the agency's perspective.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yes. Thank you, Chair. Jeremy Reed, Chief Engineer, Agency of Education. If the chair would indulge me for a second, I did want to just address something from this morning's testimony. I think Candice said something about 23% inflation year over year. I think she misspoke at 2% to 3% currently. I don't know if that was obvious to everybody.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: So I was supposed to

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: be here. Yeah,

[Speaker 0]: I

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: apologize for the misstatement.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I thought I heard something, Addison. I mean, we've got big decisions to make, and I wanna make sure that one decision is if you don't do it now, it's gonna be 25% more. It's gonna be more, we know that.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Correct. Yeah,

[Speaker 0]: it's a big difference.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So the Federal Highway Administration has not updated the new National Highway Construction Cost Index. But if we look at the PPI or the CPI, 23 is not it. Let's just say two to five at most.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: That's

[Speaker 0]: good. Since we're indulging that subject, you must have visitors starting to come back or not been the benefits that you're regularly on. I thought you testified that things felt like or seemed like, at least compared to your engineers' estimates, and then the bids coming back, there's something starting to smooth out or leveling off. I believe you testified to that effect.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Correct. So we saw in 'twenty three, 'twenty four, 'twenty five just massive amounts of volatility. And most of our estimating practices are we were looking and we try to then project. So we were missing the mark by low all over the place. I will say of recent bids, we're actually a little over, our engineers' estimates are a little over what the market's showing. But I think we discussed inflation is generally one direction. So it's not that the cost is coming down, it's just the inflation's moderating and becoming much more predictable.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I would suggest we never in this committee say the bids are coming in less than expected. Fair enough. How can you do your job?

[Speaker 0]: We also, in that vein, we will have favored contractors in at some point in the committee like we have most every year, and talk about their We have not heard their feedback yet on this governor's budget, but we do plan or hikes. We will certainly have the papers, the contractors, their lobbyists, be skinned on their opinion of the governor's recommended budget as well. Much like what we're trying to do here in the language, they're impacted by the governor's budget, they're going to come in and testify on their opinion of the governor's budget and anybody else that is impacted by the governor's recommendation budget that we feel that all should come in that wants to speak on it. We'll also give you that. Just like on this language, we're going to try to make sure we understand it, why you need it, and who could be impacted by it that we would want to hear from.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Very good, though. So, yeah. Very, very small t bill this year. I could start in section three. This is I don't know if it's classified as a technical correction or not, but very low substance here, just largely trying to clean up the language related to the Vermont state standards or excuse me, the application of MUTCD and state standards and guidance, which would be the Vermont state standards, and what would be required if a design speed was lower than the post speed limit and some expansion of what appropriate means. Section three, no?

[Speaker 0]: Oh, I skipped. There we go. Sorry. I was on the wrong page. I'm like, boy, that doesn't look match what I would So not

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: a lot of substance there, just a bit of a clarification and

[Speaker 0]: expansion. Page four of 11, section three. I'll catch up to you eventually.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: But where is the mail in? It's not in current documents.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: It started last Friday.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: That first

[Rep. Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: heading, if you don't remember

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: it called. Only a number. Draft.

[Speaker 0]: So we won't have a number until after it comes out, which is kind of an interesting side. Yeah.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So you have

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: to look under Doctor. So

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: what was the history on this, the background? Why this was this something that your counsel sort of came up with sort of just clarification?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. This is largely based on just trying to provide the next step of clarity as far as what appropriate warnings are and the fact that we're maintaining the Vermont State Standards and not necessarily developing and implementing them at this point, because that goes back to the 90s. We've obviously got a rewrite going on now, So we're just sort of maintaining those standards. Not a lot of substance here, just trying to make the language as clear as possible.

[Speaker 0]: Reading is hard. One second. At least I'm on the right page now. Whenever I hear the terms standards and guides and planning and design, I always look at least one direction on the table to see if there's any additional comments. And now I know to look in the other direction too.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: If we're Questions to answer. Would this trigger any new signs throughout the highway? Will this clarification

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: or no?

[Speaker 0]: No. I don't search for answers. Yeah, I know. I was looking at this. Representality, too. Whenever I hear design and standards and pieces, there's usually a question. Is this really doesn't change? What does it do for projects that are not on the National Highway System? Again, it's It maintains state standards and guidance for GMI. It's a language cleanup to a certain degree?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: To a large degree, it's just a language cleanup based on a legal preference that we're no longer developing and implementing or just maintaining them, adding standards and guidance, and then expanding upon what appropriate warnings would include signs, signals, Americans.

[Speaker 0]: Kind of interesting that the sentence, they felt the need to say design speeds may be lower than legal speeds. In other words, it's illegal speed, so they had to design to it. So no, with that, can design it lower than that. Before, you couldn't, I guess. That must have been a little bit interesting. But does anybody have any concerns or questions or any piece on why it came about, and you're really saying it's language clarification. It's not a significant policy change. And it's your engineers and designers on projects that are working under this rule. This isn't a designer in a town or a highway or a RPC. It's your it's the agency's designers that are impacted by this. Is that right?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yes. But I don't know that it would be exclusively our designers. In theory, a consultant could be doing it at the request of a town or an RPC as well. There

[Speaker 0]: would be Please go ahead.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: Just want say, I see this as incremental moving towards this new regime that was not quite ready, but Getting there. We're getting there, yeah.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: So Jeremy, does this mean that AOT designers can choose lower speeds than the legal speeds, or does it mean that municipalities can choose lower speeds rather than legal speeds with appropriate warning signs, signals and markings? Makes Both. This Both. Okay. If this goes through, I could tell my town, you can change your speed limit from 30 to 25 on Route 100 if you would like, as long as we have

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: good speed.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No, so there's still a process to change the speed limit. What you're saying, you can change the speed limit, excuse me, you can have a speed limit higher than the design speed limit with appropriate signs, signals and pavement markings. This does not give towns unilateral authority just to drop the

[Speaker 0]: speed limits.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, you said higher than the low.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: This allows for a speed limit posting higher than the design speed. So design speeds lower than the legal speeds. So just the way you represent or why you framed it as the posted speed. So the posted speed would be higher than the design speed. So the design speed lower than legal speed, meaning the engineers did some analysis, the roadway is designed for 35, the posted speed could be 40 with appropriate warnings, signals, signs, pavement markings.

[Speaker 0]: So is this like when the yellow sign says 40, but the speed limit's 50? You probably should be doing 35 or 40 around this curve. The speed limit on the road is 50. I can still It's 50. I can still go 50, but you did put up a note saying, hey, that might not work out for you. That's But what you're saying? Yes.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And that's, again, if we look at what was crossed out, nothing substantive changes. Design speeds may be lower than the legal speeds, just as you pointed out, that was deemed redundant. Provided appropriate warnings are posted, this describes in greater detail what appropriate warnings are. And it is appropriate warning signs, signals, and Americans are used as provide some case for PSA. There are plenty of roads out

[Speaker 0]: there with 90 degree turns in this state. Legal speed limit is still 50 on the middle of that turn. And this when you still define the road, you still may put a 90 degree turn in, and the speed limit may still do 50, but there'll be warnings.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There should be warnings there.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So no real change in practice. This is, again, just a legal preference on how it's worded and how expansive the examples of appropriate signs are.

[Speaker 0]: Designer highway and engineer designers do not have any significant change to their work. No change in practice. No change in practice. Change in wording. And the towns can't change the speed limit without going through the other, the process is still out there. But they do have a process where they can change speed limits, right? Yes.

[Rep. Kate Lalley (Member)]: You're only allowed to do it in certain circumstances.

[Speaker 0]: And if the study comes back and says it should be higher, we did put a limit that says they don't have it. You can't automatically Isn't that what we did last year or the year before? If the speed study comes back and it says that that road should be posted at 50, that does not mean that it goes to 50 without the town's approval. In other words, there was a whole thing I went over about the opinion. People had asked for a study somewhere, and they wanted to lower it to 30, and it was 40. And the study came back and said it should go to 50. And it will go to 50, except we limited it and said, no, you can't go up. You can only go down. The speed's low, it's bad. I'll figure that out. I said that was part of what we did in the T bill a couple of

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: years ago, in the last couple of years. Certain places are eligible for that.

[Speaker 0]: That's part of the bill, if somebody wants to expand that. Representative White.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, so thank you for clarifying that, Jeremy. And so I understand that this isn't really changing anything substantively, but I do want to just underscore that I'm hearing a lot of commentary from my little townies that they really want to reduce speed limits, and that the process doesn't help them reduce the speed limits because I think the process is looking for evidence of crashes happening. If there aren't a lot of crashes, I think their point of view is we don't want to wait for crashes to justify lowering a speed limit where children might be crossing the street or fighters or so forth. So I just want to go on the record of saying this is definitely not addressing some of the concerns that my town has, not that it was supposed to, but I just Understood. And I don't know if there's other language, if the agency is more broad.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Think there's a bill on the wall to that end.

[Speaker 0]: But for now, there is a process, and that's where that we Is there anybody outside of the designer, people who are working on design that already are familiar with these types of references to 23 BSA that would have any impact or comment on this change in the law. I know it's a little mundane, but we're going to change a law. We ought to know who's going to be impacted, and it truly is more stylistic. Is there anybody else that's going to be impacted that truly isn't?

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Does anybody have any doubts about who that might be? Well, I guess I don't think we're changing law. Think it's just a technical correction to a law that isn't changing, it's just the verbiage, or actually the location or whatever of the verbiage in this paragraph. It says, I mean, the cross out section is provided appropriate warnings are posted. It already says that you need appropriate warnings, and this is just if appropriate warning signs, signals, etcetera, are used. So I think it's fine. It's just a different way of saying the same thing. But I understand Candice is concerned, this is not a place for I'm sorry, Representative White's concern isn't in this particular paragraph.

[Speaker 0]: Anybody else have any other comments? Guess we can thank you. And we'll move to the next section. Section five.

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

[Speaker 0]: Bridge inspections, postings, and closures. Page seven.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So Section five really came from Federal Highway and that the division office was reviewing our Title 19 language. And they thought that there was some ambiguity in roles and responsibilities. And I just want to stress what we've drafted or what Damien's drafted here maintains existing practice. We're not proposing any changes. The attempt here was to put in statute specific roles and responsibilities to match existing practice. And again, that was largely from Federal Highway Division office, I believe, said, well, sort of some gray area on who actually has what authority and what responsibility. So this is just trying to make that as clear and explicit as possible. And I think this has been the practice for decades at this point.

[Speaker 0]: We were on the

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I'd love to see if they concur with those responsibilities or what.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, it's all brand new. Right? That's what the underlying means? Correct. And I did have a note on a question. I only know when Dayton and our alleged counsel went through it. Enforcements and penalties all the way to e on four, whatever, based on page nine. Let's see. Enforcements and penalties. In addition to any other penalties provided by law, a person that violates a bridge posting or closure by a municipality or the agency shall be subject to a civil penalty of not more than a thousand dollars. Is that a new penalty? The way I sort of left to understanding, if you have a bridge and there's a weight limit on it, then you will go over it and you go over, you're subject to a penalty. If we've taken that bridge and said it's not safe and we reduced the amount of that weight limit and you drove over it, you are no longer actually breaking the law because breaking a posted adjustment isn't in the law and that's what this needs to add. Is that

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: at all true? That's honestly what I got from Damian's testimony. I would not have intuitively thought that. We can have DMV come in and provide more detail, but that seems to be the case. And that ties into section six as well, where parenthetical 13, I think does it.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I do have an arrow down there to that next piece saying, is it's really the case that if we reduce what's able to go over it, they're not actually breaking the law anymore? If it was left the same, they're breaking the law. That is quite something. I don't know. We'll see, I guess. But that's the case. We're saying all of this is well, it's section five. It's it's all brand new language. That seems like a a lot. Came from the Federal Highway. Their review of our language says, this doesn't seem clear. You guys should add this and rewrite this or rewrite add this section. Add this section just to provide absolute clarity on on who's on

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: the roles and responsibilities and authority.

[Speaker 0]: So you the agency inspects all the bridges. If something comes up in between inspections, the municipality is supposed to warn you, the agency. Mhmm. And you'll go out and post You'll go out and assess based on that warning and do the full post if they're steady

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: or close it or change it? They will they will physically post it. We will send a recommendation to them from our bridge inspector bridge inspection lead to say, we recommend posting at this level or closing. We then work with them. You can reopen it if you do X, Y, and Z of repairs.

[Speaker 0]: And further back in this spot, if it's a municipal bridge and they're responsible for maintenance, but you find a problem with it, you will close it if you feel you need to.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: If there's like an imminent safety thing, yes. But if it's just we're going from 20 tons to eight tons, let's say, or 16 tons, we'll just send them a letter, say, please update the posting on this structure. And then there's normally some dialogue back and forth. Hey, can we do some work to get it back up to where it was? We'll do some engineering to identify what that work could be.

[Speaker 0]: But there is no requirement here for you to consult with them. It's your decisions. That's that out of good policy, but not out of the laws that you have to consult. They don't have a You make the decision, they have to live with it, then they have to appeal or work with you to try to make any change. Clarifying that you have the responsibility to close any bridge.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. And that's where I think Federal Highway came in, because through the NVIS, National Bridge Inventory System, we are responsible for any bridge over 20 feet regardless of maintenance responsibility. And so again, that's the attempt here is just to make it clear that when we say a bridge has to be closed or posted, that is our full authority, even if maintenance responsibility belongs to the town.

[Speaker 0]: Those of that are close to the town, do have any comment on that? Yeah.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Number four here, it does say the municipality will be responsible for all costs, expenses related to the posting or closure. I'm I'm assuming that's the way it is now.

[Speaker 0]: Yes, yep.

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

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: this is exactly how it worked, because in my recent bridge closure, this is exactly what happened. Agency inspected, came in and said, You have to post to eight tons because it can't handle anymore. They came back a month or so later and said, You need to close the bridge. They worked with us to shore it up a bit so that we could have one lane passage over it with stops so that only one car at a time would still be eight ton limit. And so we got the temporary bridge. Mean, it under contract to be redone, get the temporary bridge in, which just opened a week and a half ago. But everything, the way this is laid out, is exactly what happened. The bridge closure or change of signage or anything in the town was responsible for signage and everything else. My question is that last one with the fine. So the way I read this, it says, in addition to any other penalties provided by law, A person that violates a bridge posting, so now our bridge used to be posted whatever it was, 20 tons, I'm going to say, we then repost it to eight tons. So the 20 tons was no longer there, it's now eight tons, and they violate that posting, by the municipality or the agency shall be subject to a civil penalty of 1,000, or is this what the chair said? That's not true. I don't quite understand what you meant by it.

[Speaker 0]: Well, in that section E, we're adding a civil penalty for somebody that violates a bridge posting, which makes me think that it wasn't there before.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Oh, it was there, but we've lowered that. So I took that as, well, we reposted it to a different tonnage.

[Speaker 0]: And when there's an emergency posting, it makes it seem like that may have been a loophole where there was no longer a penalty.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Reading it that way?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: That's how I read it. And based on Damon's testimony, that's what I understood. It defied what I would have thought.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: If we repost a bridge

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think I need to clarify my testimony. Okay. So they're under existing law in title 23, we have subchapter, chapter 13, sub chapter 15 governs weight, size, and loads. It sets basic load limits and allows municipalities to establish special limits for certain bridges. There's also special regulations that we have for covered bridges where you can establish weight, height, and width. Same actually for regular bridges you can establish like if you have a arch over the middleware or something you can establish a height limit And there are penalties for those, they're enhanced for covered bridges. This is meant as I read it to be in addition to that, so in addition to any other penalty provided by law. And so you can get a special permit to do like an oversized load on the highway to exceed these limits and then the agency works with you to route your load. But there are basic weight limits on the highways. So for example, basic limit for a bridge with a wood floor is 16,000 pounds. And then you can have a special limit if for some reason structurally, for example, if they inspect the bridge and determine that structurally it cannot support 16,000 pounds, they could limit the weight down to, let's say, three tons.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Okay, which we have. So in that particular case, if you post it to three tons, can you assess the 1,000 civil penalty?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, so under the proposed language, if you do the posting because there's a deficiency in the structure, you can now take that $1,000 penalty in addition to anything else you might be able to assess under the

[Speaker 0]: statute. So

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you know currently there are overweight and oversized penalties in the statute. This is creating an additional penalty.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, but under that smear, helped to get lower, so we went over it and said I'm going over it anyways. There's no panel. Like if they're at that 16,000 or the 1,000 whatever state lowered it and said it should be 12,000. They're still under the 16, but they're over the 12. There's no panel.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There is authority in the existing statute, or for example a local authority can otherwise post something that they know, like the bridge is not structurally safe. For example a covered bridge, you can post you know no vehicles in excess of seven feet, no vehicles in excess of three tons on this bridge, and then our existing statute already has penalties for exceeding those limits, you then have this other provision here which as I read it is adding an additional penalty and possibly closing loophole, but you would still be exceeding the posted limit because presumably you'd take down the sign that says no vehicles over three tons and replace it with one that says no vehicles over two tons if you had to

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: lower What's loophole? What am I, what's that?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think there is also concern just that if you, if the posting is ambiguous, there may be argument around it, I don't know for sure, but there is already penalty for overweight. It might be helpful for me to break down what the current penalties are, which I don't think I can do coherently off the top of my head, and then talk about where this would fit out.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: So this $1,000 is a new fine?

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's a new fine for these

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: It just would have to go somewhere else.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, and it's for these bridges where there's been a specific structural issue identified that makes the bridge less safe.

[Speaker 0]: I

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: have a question on enforcement. Yes. We don't have many police in our towns and we have some posted bridges. Think the only time we're gonna know that the posting has been exceeded is if it's been exceeded so much that the bridge falls in. In which case, we want

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: to talk about what's happening. Yeah,

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: that's a common problem. I think it was one in Pittsburgh where we actually sent some DMV officers down. Oh, Pouech, excuse me. So I think every small town's in that same boat. That's just the nature of traffic enforcement in small town communities.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Is there more in statutes somewhere else that if that does indeed happen, if a truck overweight travels across a bridge and ruins a bridge, Are there more specific larger penalties?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So I don't know to the extent that the penalties get larger. What I will say is, and Irish Barrett's a prime example of this, where the propane truck went over the bridge and ultimately destroyed the bridge because it just burned off a day or whatever. We then file an insurance claim against the trucking company. And so I think if obviously, you've got a collapsed bridge, you've got a truck that did that, certainly DMV is going to show up with any commercial vehicle accident. They will get the weight of the truck. If they were found in excess of the posted limit, believe the town would then file an insurance claim for as much as a replacement cost that they could recover.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So in our town, there were cement blocks, like three blocks, just enough for a car to go through, and 18 wheelers moved those blockages, made that right for, not once, but several times, and people live on either side of that bridge, we're just like videoing it, taking pictures, I mean, it's incredible, trucks we're doing. It's posted, like both ends, in advance, like two miles away, like a bridge is closed to trucks. It's crazy. I think this additional penalty is

[Speaker 0]: fine. As far as the language regarding who is in charge and who boasts and who bays, who else. Obviously it has a town implication and has, they have some level of judiciary if either in the Louisiana means you'll do fine or not. But we're also going to want to hear from, what is that, the Mont Leagues of Cities and Towns, is that, know, to clarify or agree with this bridge language? Where do we want

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: to hear from? It's current practice, just from my, just from what happened in polity. This is exactly what happened. And I will say, AOT was really good about if they had extra signs, they could give loan to us. But for all intents and purposes, this is what happened.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: And I guess, I I guess the only other person, I mean everything else is just reinforcing how to find what we do. I guess the only person I would probably want to hear from, see how it affects truckers, would be the Truck Investor Association.

[Speaker 0]: And

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: just to give the committee some sort of scale of how frequently this happens, this is maybe six to 10 times a year, I would say, somewhat in that vicinity.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: All six bridges from both.

[Speaker 0]: Two of them.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: What was that what? Sorry, not to belabor the point, but these overweight trucks are filing routes with AOT now.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: No, so these would be trucks that are legal on the roadway.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: So they don't need to be filed on a Correct.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: But they're just too heavy for a specific bridge. So they're in theory legal for the roadway, but when you get to a trust or some historic structure, they're not supposed to go through that, and they oftentimes do.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: And my assumption is that they're following Google Maps or something, and it's not

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. I mean, it's like the notch. Right? I mean, there's only so many signs we can put up, we lose the effectiveness.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Got that on my bingo card.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: It's a whole bill trails.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. I mean, there's a covered bridge in Linden that just is figuring it might get in here. It's a chronic problem. We just replaced the bridge on Route 14 in Moralton. While we were replacing it, it's a railroad underpass. They were having two trucks a week smash into the old bridge.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Is there any discussion in the transportation world about these Google Maps and other maps having a truck specific selector that prevents them from going over the notch and through covered bridges.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Somewhat. I think at the end of the day, we're at the mercy of that technology, whether it be Waze or Google Maps or whoever. And to the extent that they want to dedicate resources to that, I don't think it's a priority for them at this point.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: This will affect the for getting that it's not really like bridge over, it's under. Would this apply for $1,000 So

[Speaker 0]: I don't know if this applies.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: This is, I think, strictly related to postings and weights.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: But I

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: think in section six, it's bridge in violation of a posting or closure. So I don't know if height and width would apply because it's posted to a maximum height and a maximum width.

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

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: in theory, section six would maybe address that.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: I was just curious if they would be affected by a thousand dollars in time. Anybody

[Speaker 0]: else have any comments on section five or are we on section six too? I do know that there is truck specific GPS. I have a couple of trucker friends that do have programming specifically with trucker. Oh, you know, for based on your height, weight, load, etcetera, whether it's accurate and whether it has these updates. And I couldn't say that, but I do know that the truckers do buy a specific trucker GPS.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: And there is some other technology in more populous states that, well, in bigger trucking companies, there's actually a module that you can put in that then, maybe that's a software. It basically is a proprietary product where they will tell you if you're on acceptable route or not type thing. And some of the bigger trucking companies on a national scale have that.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. The problems we have are usually not with those national companies. I digress.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Section six is largely the first part, eleven and twelve, is just, again, adding a little bit more specificity to the the referenced violations. And then very similar to above, adding a thousand dollar violation. Section eight just extends the authority to enter into a public private partnership. Think we've only got one in the state, and that's here in Berlin. But in theory, the West Walton Center might be an example where we would entertain something similar to that. So this just extends that authority.

[Speaker 0]: There's only the one right now.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Believe the the Berlin

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Maple Fields.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. Maple Fields Travel Information Center, whatever it's called. It's it's the one public private partnership right now.

[Speaker 0]: Do we have any questions about that?

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Representative Keith? The state owns part of it, then or is it do do we have land? Do we Is there something that we supplied that's out of public private? I

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: don't know. We provided not the land because it was there. I think we provided maybe some capital, and we have some information in there as well. I don't I don't know the details. I could get

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: that for you

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: if you're interested. But No.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: It's that was for for a welcome center. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. And plus a little

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: bit more, the guy's got a retail

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Makes sense. I know that from being on the committee for a few years, there has been this has been in here since they closed the welcome center on the border back a long time ago, there's been an effort to have a welcome center at the northern border where eighty nine comes in, and there was some discussion about looking for a private public partnership at the first exit to put a welcome center and information for tourist travel, etcetera, and that there was a willingness by the agency to try to find something that would work. It didn't happen. They're still the same gas stations and they didn't use the property that came open and nothing happened about the willingness. I'd also heard this in Randolph. There's a pretty substantial piece of property, and there's a lot of tourist activity seems to be a popular spot. There was a discussion at some point of trying to have a welcoming or another rest area in Randolph area that would have more information, but that didn't happen. The Swan one didn't happen, and now they're just, well, in the white book, they're supposed to be a night of eating book, the potential of a Northern Border Welcome Center, coming across from 'eighty nine south. And if they can find somebody that would help potentially run it or evolve in it or whatnot, then they would want that option open as a possibility, but it hasn't been particularly fruitful at this point.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: On a national scale, it's got some level of popularity, and it's for more than welcome centers. You can even have bridge projects, and private portion of the partnership will collect tolls to recover their costs. So that's how they generate revenue, for instance. So, three Ps in the industry is what they're called, or P3s rather. And yeah, there is definitely in high volume areas, some use of that.

[Rep. Candice White (Member)]: Jean Paul? So just to clarify, this piece just extends the sunset. So until 2029, AOT can continue to have public private partnerships.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Maybe I wasn't picking. Do they exist today?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Just one. And that's at the Babbel Center up in Berlin. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So if we were not to do this, then that one would end.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well, I think think the way it's structured is and I'd have to go look at the underlying language, but we just couldn't enter into anymore.

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

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: You know, I think I'm assuming we've got a long term contract here that we're not gonna be able to

[Speaker 0]: To explore new That's the way I understood it.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Question was your company might not sponsor a new business up in your area.

[Speaker 0]: Well, I think that's something that the next generation in our business will have to look at. I'm not looking for more work. But the next generation and the next generation after that is going to have to be taken care of soon. The economy's ticking.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: It's your swag. It's in Philadelphia.

[Speaker 0]: You can in that public private partnership, you're going to be able to find a waiver in the federal highway rule that I'll be able to sell something? Is that one of the things that this allows it to do? Actually, you have the interstate.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: There is some notion of that by any land that has been used or was required with federal funds. There are limitations on what you can do there. At this point, I kind of recite them. But yeah, there are definitely limitations to what you can do on land within federal. I appreciate you look funded.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So there are places when you go to a rest stop in other states where there's like a Burger King in there. Is that sort of the same thing with tolls?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Exactly.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Okay. So because we didn't we got the free highway, we can't do that.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, so New Hampshire being the prime example, They've got the common man and everything. Liquor store. All your basic necessities.

[Rep. James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Turkey for the ride.

[Speaker 0]: Any

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: other questions on that? Section nine is just a clarification when we issue an 11:11 permit on who can actually appeal that decision. And this is trying to limit that neighbors can't file appeals when we give a driveway permit, basically. And it's starting to happen, and we just want to clarify that. Just because you're not used to a neighbor, you can't appeal our eleven eleven permit to the T Group.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Who can though? So if I wanted to put in a eleven eleven, people in town think that might be dangerous. No one else can appeal it. I'm sort of curious.

[Speaker 0]: Well, so

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: what the proposal is that it would be the applicant or permitee, because oftentimes you could get a permit, but there could be a condition in there that you don't agree with. So the permitee and the applicant are often the same. It's just at what phase. To your question, yeah, it'd be our preference that there isn't wide appellate authority based on somebody who's not really involved in the project.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: But when one is initially under consideration, do you take public comment?

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I don't think we do, no. I think it's strictly kind of an engineering analysis. And yeah, Obviously, there are other regulatory mechanisms that could be triggered, whether it be a development review board or active frontier or whatever. But from the peer, the highway piece, assuming it's our highway, that's the other thing, it's a state highway, it's not a town highway. Yeah, I don't think we open that up to anything else.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And out of the decision, is the decision process strictly on an engineering basis? Is this safe or what? How could I, okay, it could be made safe here, the requirements, or it can't be safe, can't be.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: So we try for that not to be the outcome, and so there's some engineering discretion as far as, you wanted it here, but if you got closer to the crest of the hill, it'd be a little bit safer. So we're not going to necessarily give it to you here, but can you move it up here? And we try to work with the landowner or the applicant to find the best possible outcome. We very much try not to say unequivocally no.

[Rep. Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: There must be times when we do.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: There's probably circumstances where we absolutely do, that's probably more frequent with commercial than residential. A single residential drive, So many of these things are grandfathered. It would be tough to drive around the state and not see something that's not good.

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Representative McCoy. So do municipalities handle this driveline? Do they allow any neighbors to file? I'm not aware enough to do. I think they just go out with their engineer, the person who wants the driveway, the road crew moves out and says, yeah, this looks good, and then they just give them the permit. There's no right of appeal for a neighbor because you don't like where the driveway is.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think that's true. I mean, I can't speak for every town, but I know I

[Rep. Patricia McCoy (Member)]: know that's what I think we do. Sure it's pretty much the same than any other town. So this kind of mirrors what towns are doing.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah. Really, this is a response to some recent legal challenges where we're trying to not have it widespread authority.

[Damien Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Also worth noting that the traffic issues from construction are often handled in zoning as well. So they often look flat, traffic studies and so forth. When you're zoning a new commercial development or a large residential development, even smaller residential developments may ask questions about where's the driveway going to go, who is the right way, and in that instance neighbors do have generally a right to at least weigh in at the municipal level, etc. Obviously you're all familiar with the debates about Act two fifty and so forth that have been going on in the area, so there is review in other forums.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: So I guess this is a big policy change. Can you just give us, being that now, some background of how many eleven eleven permits were issued over the last five years and how many people outside of the Epigoda from any contestant? Just get a feel.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Yeah, so I don't know how many we've given, but I can tell you this is in response to just one, and we're trying to head that approach So this is a new potential problem we're trying to address. Is that ongoing? It's ongoing, so I don't Just want

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: stepping into the fire.

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: Well, the keyboard is still gonna do the keyboard thing, I mean, that's ongoing But at the end of the day, we're just trying to clarify that, and I'm sure the pending case will go forward regardless of what this does.

[Rep. Timothy R. Corcoran II (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, I know what you're saying, but it sounds like it's probably something more of a community of price and explorer. I was gonna get the T board in general. But

[Jeremy Reed (Chief Engineer, Vermont Agency of Transportation)]: I think to your point, it's not a widespread problem, but we're trying to make sure that it does not become a widespread problem.

[Speaker 0]: Anybody else? Alright. So excuse me. Jeremy, thank you for coming back in. Damien, appreciate the input. Looks like we have a couple of clarifications there on some of bridge pieces, these penalties, and some extra a little bit of background work, and we'll pick that up on the next time we put it on the agenda. And we are adjourned.