Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Chair. You

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: don't have to sit in the chair against I'm sure they'll find room for you there somewhere, but you're welcome to as well. We're live back again here on Tuesday, 03/10/2026. And we're sort of as a committee looking at the drive electric piece and then looking at the overall program electric vehicle piece that are all of all the close out of all the funds that were available for most of those programs. And then we went from there to there. And now, I guess we're asking for I'm looking for an update on sort of how the agency views the relationship with vendor in the case of drive electric programs in this sort of environment that's at the end of those incentive programs and in the fall, most of them were not in the fall last year. I'm sort of interested in what the agency's position on how we're moving forward. And I think that the lack of what was referenced in a sort of an ongoing dialogue and some work that's in place. And I'm not sure exactly what you have prepared or not, but that's sort of the direction that I think we're looking for as a committee for some information on that.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: So for the record, Andrea Wright, environmental policy manager and oversee the grant agreement with Drive Electric Vermont. I don't have anything prepared, just sort of a very brief remarks on it. You heard a little bit from the incentives report before and what Dave had from Drive Electric Vermont said earlier. We've had an agreement in place for many years now. We certainly value the work that comes out of that relationship and the grant agreement that we have. We've had several amendments to continue it and continue to have that support. So we definitely It's something that we do value. Dave mentioned that right now, at the current level of spending, we probably will be out of those funds by sometime in the fall, somewhere September or possibly a little bit later. If there is no further funding, we will be having greater conversations about what can drop off. And we are also looking at other avenues and options for continuing some of our relationships and the work that is in that grant agreement, specifically related to electric vehicle charging deployments. There is several different things within the grant agreement, some that have to do more specifically with EV electrification and the vehicles and getting those into market. And then there is a couple of different items related more specifically to electric vehicle charging. So we're exploring different options for funding sources for more direct integration of DEV with our NEVI deployment and project specific work. So that's one thing that we're looking at and see if there's any other options that we might have for continuing our relationship with them. But electrical charging is definitely our focus right now. So that's what we're focusing on with DEV as well.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. I understand at least you heard the previous the work is not on a specific grant per se. It's a billable hours agreement. Did I understand from that?

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Do some of the invoices.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We can

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: agree to what they

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: The amount of work can vary from time to time, year to year, month to month. Yeah, so kind

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: of outlined by various tasks that we outlined in the scope of work.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So your demand on them, you have some flexibility in those demands to swap them in that

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: agreement? Yes.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: And especially with the language with up to 325,000 is what the language was, so we have some flexibility in not reaching that, but we anticipate that we would reach that again. Dave explained that that would be sometime in the fall.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: But I would say referring to the money and the activity that you have now or have been, having that work can vary then. Mike, continue to represent that.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: And so what you're implying or what you're saying is potentially from the NEVI program as part of that, like rollout, there's, yes, I don't want to put words in your mouth, there's a need to advertise it or to reach out for engagement for people to know about it. And so are you saying potentially that you could continue to use Drive Electric for that source?

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: That and potentially other tasks that we haven't ironed out yet, more closely related and directly related to actually getting the projects out, not just education and outreach as they

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: have done, but

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: more on the project management side of things. And so again, we are just in initial conversations about what that might look like.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Okay. And those conversations are because now you see Drive Electric going to run out of funds and you want to continue to partner with them or utilize their capability? Is that

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Yeah, I think the needs are changing right now. We don't have the funding identified from anywhere to continue our incentive programs. And so our focus is we do have funds through NEVI and through some general funds to work on our deployment of the AV infrastructure. And so that is our focus right now. So that's what we're talking with Drive Electric about, changing the focus a little bit. It's already in the agreement. It's a matter of which pieces of the agreement we move forward and how much.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Okay, and with how to drive electric, the state has requirements to meet the Climate Action Plan, and that means finding ways, maybe not through incentives anymore, which is fine, finding ways to educate, coordinate all kinds of activities to encourage your electrification transportation system. So are you saying there's a desire that you're gonna find a way to do this, or is this a, we might do this? Inishra, what you're referring to is this? Try to continue to work with Drive Electric. Or maybe it's somebody else.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Yeah, it's not in the governor's recommend that we have any

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: We haven't identified anything specific.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Right, so we're working from the money that we have now, and then we have to be looking at right now, if we have a different way of providing support through the electric vehicle charging, how much we can stretch the existing funding for those other

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: tasks in our grant agreement. When do you think that decision would be made? I would say

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: in the next month or two.

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

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: the situation with transportation doing some layoffs, I kind of feel a little funny about coughing up 300 and some odd thousand dollars put towards towards incentives. People are losing their jobs. So it's just a statement.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: That's a decision that's out of my hands.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative White?

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah. Andrea, can you remind me so would the Drive Electric program be under environmental policy and sustainability in the overall transportation budget, knowing that there's currently no money earmarked for that program.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Can you guys help me?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Yes.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yes, okay, thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Okay. Anybody else have any other questions? Andrew, thank you very much for coming in. Michelle, Patrick. So I guess if there's any further discussion on this, anybody have any comments? Whatnot, I have a few other announcement things to get into, but I'll make sure that it's spot. I know there's people that have different events and whatnot at three, but that's okay. Tomorrow, mileage based interview fee. Met with Damian a couple of times today, our alleged counsel. Went through it, and we focused on the rate, and we focused on the piece. But there's a lot more to it. And we went through kind of the rest of it. The agency presented the piece. Then Damian sort of gave us a quick walkthrough of perhaps on a day when we kind of checked off. But there's some issues around making sure that we understand how enforcement would be and what penalties for enforcement might be. And I'm, I sadly apologize that I didn't really maybe fully grab it. We're gonna dig into it tomorrow. I need a pretty, you always do get serious effort to it tomorrow. We really need make sure we understand what's been proposed, not on the rate, but on how the program would work, how the penalties would be, how you would manage it, anything that comes up. There's more to it. He'll comment on that when we start tomorrow. I just want kind of go back and review what we had on mileage based user fee. And there's all the part beyond just the rate. Part of implementation that we need to make sure because we have a commitment charge this come January 1. We need to make sure that we really are comfortable with the program itself. So I feel like I might have moved over it a little too quickly or not came back to it enough. But tomorrow, we need to make sure that we dig into it enough that we really understand what we are, what's in the language and what we're doing. And I'm not sure this sounds the best the way that I'm presenting it, but I kind of had to have my thinking reworked on that for the depth. I was kind of focused. We really got onto that inflation adjuster, which we need to talk about that too. But we really need to make sure that as a Vermonter, if you have an electric vehicle, then you have to report your mileage. And then if you don't report your mileage, what's going to happen? And then if you don't respond to that, what's going to happen? And also, what's gonna happen within our agency or our motor vehicles on how they're going to handle it? So I'm just sort of previewing tomorrow that we gotta dig into that one a little deeper than perhaps we already have. And we need to think about what additional testimony we may need to hear. And I have to sort of say, I apologize if we didn't get to it sooner, but we have time. And we're going dig into that. And I want to make sure that I highlighted that to be ready for that portion of it because we're starting to check off and we have been. We finished that before we left on Friday. Items that are definitely going be in the T bill. We have sort of a commitment long term that said we're going be ready for mileage based user fee January 1. And I want to

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: hit that part a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, think there's the rate and the inflation adjuster, which we should have a little bit of discussion on it. We'd see where we have agreement or not. But then I think, not only what the penalties are of it, but about different options on how people will think, you know, how is that all gonna work? I think Patrick described it a little bit, but, you know, it would be good to dig into that. It's like, okay, so if I have a electric vehicle, I'm not gonna get inspected for a little while, you know, when will I have to start paying and how do I pay quarterly or monthly or whatever it might be? It would be good to just understand that, see what the options are for people and sort of feel what it would be like to have to do that. Because it's different, nobody does that now.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes, and I

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: appreciate And the payment, the added registration fee is present, it just happens. This other one is a little more complicated and it'd be good to know that it's not as complicated as we might think of it on the surface. So I think that's a good idea.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm not sure if you were raising your hand or not raising your hand. I think you don't have to.

[Candice White (Member)]: You all are teasing us up for tomorrow morning.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And then the same thing for the afternoon. Yes, if you have some I sure I I wanna make sure you know where we're doing tomorrow and why we need to dig back into it a little bit more than we had.

[Candice White (Member)]: I do have a concern regarding, so the MBUF, I believe is proposed that an EV driver would pay at their annual inspection, whether it's the whole lump sum or set up a payment plan. But we also know that there are a number of cars in Vermont that are not getting their inspections, And I think it's a secondary offense, so you can't get pulled over for not having an inspection. So there's a little concern about the enforcement. If it's set up to be paid at inspections, not everybody's getting inspected. I think we've heard some data that corroborates that. So how does this proposal deal with current behavior and turnover?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I think it's a good point. I think that on top of that, people suggest that they don't If people that do or don't register their vehicle, how do we handle that? And how is that managed within the process? And maybe that's a process that's more similar to this potentially new setup system than a failed inspection, per se, or a lack of an inspection system. I don't know. Can you not report your mileage, but still renew your registration?

[Candice White (Member)]: Just drive under the radar?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I don't know. But we have ears that are listening and we passed through it and now we'll be digging into it much more. And that is exactly the kind of thing we want to get into. So those are exactly the questions that we're going to be looking to get from the agency and from Damian tomorrow. Other ones, feel free to throw them out. They'll be more prepared for them. Hopefully everything's okay out there. They didn't like that part. The same sort of mindset, well, let's think of it. If we're on the we any questions on that, makes it easier for you or if want to make any other comments, you're welcome to. In the afternoon, there was been quite a bit of conversation about transportation alternatives and the water quality projects. And there's been some discussion about whether we're gonna change the requirement of how much percentage of that funding has to go to those projects. And then there's a cap whether we do or don't want to adjust the cap. This is a very different approach than what we've used in the past. And he said, I've been on the committee. This is a wide open view in terms of we're gonna do something or we're not. And we're gonna decide that as a group, what that might be. That's not perhaps the way that it's traditionally been. Don't want to comment on that. We're gonna decide tomorrow afternoon, are we putting through something on our committee bill or are we not related to water quality projects that are related to transportation alternatives? Are we making an adjustment in the amount of money, amount of requirement of fundings? Are we making an adjustment to the caps? Do we need to hear from any other areas? We're either going to kind of move it ahead or we're not. That's on the list of things that the committee asked about and took testimony about. We got all way through the regional planning. We may or may not do anything. We don't have to do anything. I'm just saying that tomorrow afternoon we're going to get to the edge of what else we have to do in that area. And some of you have strong opinions about it. Some of don't have any opinion. But we're going to get pretty close to a final decision. There's a lot to be a movement on it when we actually officially mark up the bill, which we'll work on a markup again on Friday. And then finalize it. The plan will be that by next Friday, the next Friday, it's out of here. So mileage based user has to happen as far as work to be done. Transportation alternatives is solely a choice whether we want to do something or not. But those are for tomorrow. That's what

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: we're queuing up. And on the transportation alternatives, I mean, we've heard some testimony, I think from Jeremy. It was Jeremy, maybe I'm wrong, that the funds are not going out very fast on the water quality piece. And that it could potentially put us in jeopardy of not getting additional funds, like the extra funds that, you know, at the end of the year that aren't used, hey, you get extra funds. Oh, you're in the group that aren't properly using your funds. So it it might be we don't have to overthink this and sort of, you know, even if it's like, hey. Let's make this change or let's provide flexibility to to yeah. VTrans to get the money. And if, you know, it's the bike and ped programs, that side of the 50% that tends to go up very fast and the other ones kinda not going up very fast, then maybe that solves the problem. Or gets us, you know, thrown off the gun without dictating anybody in particular.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And along that lines, that same testimony, there's the amount of cancellations that happened in this arena. So we're not getting that money out effectively. And it's sitting there. And we are in the potential of losing it and we're in potential of not getting more of it is what the testimony have erred. So what are we gonna do about it is what we're gonna really make sure. If you have an opinion, tomorrow's going be the day to make sure we're asking. We're getting the presentation, we're getting an update, we're digging further into it, and we're going make a decision on this. Pretty much make the decision like tomorrow or by Friday. Friday we'll have the actual, we'll do our little hands up and whatever. Damien's gonna take his words from there and include it or not include it in the bill. But tomorrow's sort of check, check, check, three things here in a row. So did you have a comment there?

[Candice White (Member)]: No, it's kind of ironic that we have money that is not being used when there is this incredible demand for walking and biking infrastructure can meet itself and opportunities to look into safe routes for school, both families as well. There

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: will be potential ramifications making a change or not. It might be viewed differently in other parts of the policy area, but we are very fair. It's usually an hour. Perhaps it'll be a different view on it. This is not how we traditionally do it. Tomorrow's going be

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: a little bit different in

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: that perspective, and I'm happy to try it. Does anybody else have anything else? Committee dinner, committee event, committee field trip, where you do

[Candice White (Member)]: You can

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: hear a question on that from the That's right. You got

[Candice White (Member)]: a question yet, but I said I would help.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And you organized a You tremendous organized a tremendous outdoor recreation event. I have to tell you, I hadn't been on skis in a while and I'm so glad that I went. We had a really tremendous evening. And had a great evening. We had date of the We went skiing, had a great time.

[Candice White (Member)]: Yeah, that's a good step up. Week, I did.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Works the

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: store. Stood right to last year, that was awesome. A date so we can all go? Is there a day of the week?

[Candice White (Member)]: When will our T bill be out?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Next Friday is the goal. It's not to have to be out until thirty first, but the goal from the speaker's office is

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: The twentieth.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah, that's an interesting thing. There's been a lot of discussion, I can tell you that from the clerk, there an expectation from the leadership that it'll be out next Friday. But I will tell you that it is by our rules under House Rule four, whatever they do before, That this bill and the capital bill do not have to be out until the March 31.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Wow. And

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: it's always been that way.

[Candice White (Member)]: So it's two weeks after

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's March 31 that they have to be voted out. I think it's like this year, but last year's calendar, they actually specified it was, like, the week after the policy. They just did it different. There's something to discretion when they put those crossover dates. Yeah. -I've been in several communications with the clerk, and then the clerk followed up. Then while we were out last week, I got another follow-up from the clerk with a very clear piece. The leadership would make it out next Friday. That's what we're operating under, but just as one of those funny quirks, there is more time. But then that doesn't put it in the Senate until pretty late. So we would be risking other issues by doing that. But that's the plan. And we're going to go day by day like this, checking off on the list of things of where we're at. And we should have a DMV bill by then because it's already under. So we should have that. It should help us be saying that. Yeah, DMV bill is in Senate Finance right now.

[Candice White (Member)]: Don't do it on Wednesday night. Is that the Farmers'

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Night? Wednesday night's a no. Is there a day of the week that you'd be willing to stick around for dinner, Jim? Representative Casey? Tuesday

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: is a good time.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: Tuesday a match.

[Candice White (Member)]: The twenty third? It's gonna be Tuesday but the following Tuesday?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Are we going be in the throws of crossover track? No, Late Tuesday,

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: we start at tenth.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah, well that's going to be one of the busiest weeks. Even though it's a Tuesday, we're only doing thirty Yeah, we can do it, but we might need cut their clothes. Well, actually on Tuesdays, floor is in the morning.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: But we

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: need dinner.

[Candice White (Member)]: Everybody needs dinner.

[Andrea Wright (Environmental Policy Manager, VTrans)]: The

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Tuesday starts in the morning, so I'm hoping we're still not but it could happen. Yeah, the twentieth and here. Fourth to the thirty first or whatever it was there.

[Candice White (Member)]: Tuesday the twenty third or Tuesday the thirtieth. Wait a minute.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Are there any other specifically questions why I sit here? Let me first

[Candice White (Member)]: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm giving the wrong message.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Since we moved off of this policy, what are you returning?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Twenty first.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: See you all tomorrow morning.