Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We're live. Good afternoon, Tuesday, March 31. Last day of another month here in 2026. And there's lobbying and then there's lobbying. Every day I get a note here about Group 22A. Gathering a publisher of this newspaper is very interested in activity on 22A. Every single day there's a note about 22A. Also for the committee's info, I was invited to present on your behalf the T Bill to the Senate Transportation this morning at 11:30. And they hosted for half an hour, asked some quite a bit of quite a few questions about it in general. And then said, thank you for your work and They will have told me that they would be back in touch with the real bill in a few months. They thanked us for all our hard work and summarily moved on. So no, there was lots of good jokes back and forth, lot of discussion, particularly in our shared issues with the transportation fund. Appreciate our efforts to try to highlight town highway issues and public transportation was an issue. The transportation alternatives changes we made came up and most of the rest of it was around funding and potential revenue opportunities and why we put the money where we did, and what changes we did make. Today, that means we go to work on the Senate miscellaneous motor vehicle bill, and we have the brass,

[Speaker 1]: I mean, have the commissioner from Motor Vehicles here today.

[Speaker 0]: Andrew, we appreciate you coming back to committee, and it's been a while since we've been DMV related, so probably nine months. We did get to hear a little bit from you back in January, but now we want to kind of know what's going on in the DMV, and then maybe there's a highlight of what your opinions on the appeal is, but we really want to get brought up to speed, bring everybody to get focused back on Department of Motor Vehicles.

[Speaker 1]: Absolutely. So good afternoon, Andrew Pollier, Commissioner Department of

[Speaker 0]: Motor Vehicles for the record. Thanks for having me.

[Speaker 1]: I'm gonna spend a little time. I have the team here. We're gonna brag a little bit about all the good stuff DMV has been doing this past year. Just to start off, we did find an extra $60,000,000 that Candice is going to be coming in and talk about. Just kidding. It's April Fool's Eve. I'm not going be here tomorrow.

[Speaker 0]: That was believable.

[Speaker 2]: That's your motion tomorrow. Since

[Speaker 1]: I'm not gonna be here tomorrow in April fools, I decided to get that one out there. So we did not find $16,000,000,000. I just wanna be clear. That was a joke.

[Speaker 3]: Everyone will miss me. They will miss me.

[Speaker 0]: Probably for the next few years or so. So

[Speaker 1]: we're just gonna jump right into it. Feel free to ask any questions, and we'll take this conversation probably a bunch of different ways in the courses next hour or so. Early credentials.

[Speaker 0]: So that was last year's

[Speaker 1]: item that came about midway through the session with some concerns with some changes that the administration was taking, federal administration, and then how we could protect Vermont's ability to keep issuing. So we all came to a compromise, worked together in here, we were able to implement the changes to the early renewal of credentials upon signage of the bill, which was 06/12/2025. We hit the ground running and the numbers are behind me where we stand today on the issuance of those credentials. So it's great. The team was able to do it as manual process up through November, and November got integrated into the new system, which has been kind of seamless at this point. So we've been having a lot of success with it. It was really adaptive and reactive to changes out in the world, prior to

[Speaker 0]: the team at DMV, we're

[Speaker 4]: able to move on that quickly.

[Speaker 0]: I just want to clarify. Operators for, and then is that what is that non driver ID and then operators? Okay. I just want to make sure I, you know, pull that up.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah. Just I want to say, I mean, I think we realized that it was like sort of throw in your lap, although you had said we can do this manually. I appreciate the hard work of your team to do this.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah, no, this was all the team. I say jump, and then they're the ones who have to actually do the jumping. It's all on that team, and it was well received. And from what I've heard from the public, it was, the process has been seamless.

[Speaker 0]: It's all over the state. It's a lot

[Speaker 6]: more than I thought it would be.

[Speaker 2]: I'm absolutely amazed that Rutland is the highest of that. I never would have thought that.

[Speaker 0]: Is that right up through maybe February or what ballpark what that might have been up through? Yesterday. Oh, okay. Representative White?

[Speaker 7]: Yeah. Thank you, Andrew. Can you just remind me, so the operator licenses, are those all real IDs?

[Speaker 1]: No. So these would be non I'm sorry. It'd be both. Yes, sorry.

[Speaker 7]: Yes. RealID operator. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 2]: Is that the numbers on

[Speaker 3]: the left? All of them? 114310Operator364For90342.

[Speaker 2]: Yes.

[Speaker 1]: Yeah, sorry. The confusion there was if there was a change that happened federally, it wouldn't affect the non driver or non real ID category. But in the interim, we were able to handle both sets of IDs. So we have your non real and real, and we're able to do both

[Speaker 4]: as it stands right now.

[Speaker 7]: And that's under operator that's captured under operator. That's not real and real.

[Speaker 8]: Yeah, that would be captured under the operator.

[Speaker 6]: Do you have a sense of if this was really people taking advantage of the legislation, or they just came in three months early, not knowing, and like, oh, I guess I'll renew.

[Speaker 8]: Then we'll just decipher that.

[Speaker 1]: We don't have exact numbers. I will say a lot of snowbirds have utilized this before going south to Florida. We have had a lot of anecdotally people heading out, asking about this and utilizing this.

[Speaker 6]: Okay. Yeah. It's very hard to decipher, but I'm just curious if the antenna legislation played out, but it

[Speaker 2]: on that first.

[Speaker 0]: Are you saying a positive unintended consequence?

[Speaker 6]: In some way, can do it now, yeah. That just seems a lot higher than I thought.

[Speaker 0]: Not that it's good or bad. That's early renewal, but that's not related necessarily then to the three categories. Right. And that would be,

[Speaker 1]: again, people are going to spend extra money to do this early renewal. So we have seen just anecdotally, people who have called that are in Florida or the South for the winter utilizing this beforehand. Along with what we had talked about as the tenant talks, also get feedback. And we saw that a lot right out of the bat in that June, July timeframe, people reaching out. And then once program is running, those questions kind of stopped bubbling up and people were just utilizing the system in place. So we'll jump into employee engagement. This is something that has been a really big success recently at the department. I can't take credit for it. Deputy Commissioner Matt Russo was swooping around on the VTrans, one of the VTrans SharePoint sites and found the maintenance division, I believe, has an anonymous feedback suggestion box. From day one, as a team, we've been working on how do we improve morale, how do improve employee engagement, how do we just do things better. And when the deputy commissioner brought this forward asking, hey, can we try this out and get to the department? Absolutely, wholeheartedly. So what this is, we just launched this back in January, and the feedback has been really immediate and positive, both on the employee side and then just on the changes to performance that we're seeing, we're able to make changes that we probably wouldn't have heard about otherwise. And so this is allowing employees to give feedback. And one of the important parts of when you get feedback is that feedback being heard, kind of the management one on one aspect. So when we get the feedback every two weeks, we send out a list of what the feedback was that we received, and then what our action plan is going forward. And we send that back out across all departments, everyone has visibility on what's being done. One of the very first suggestions that we received, and this is where I really wanna highlight how great this has been. Our call center sent a a feedback note against anonymous, but it was from the call center that they were having issues with paperwork. That was when people call, they have copies of the paperwork that gets sent back for to get corrected. So when our process unit sends back paperwork, we're not scanning those documents in. So when a Vermonter customer calls saying, Hey, I received this paperwork back. I need help trying to fill in what's wrong here. The call center doesn't have the paperwork either in front of them. With that suggestion, we were able to, with our brand new system, get a work item started so we can change the process so we'll be able to, in Zoom, to scan these documents in so that when people call, everyone has visibility to what is being asked to be corrected. And that we've had a dozen or so comments just like that, that we've been able to make changes to department processes and make things just a little bit better. And that has been I mean, low cost, easy fix, but we've been really getting the benefits from that. And that has been a great project, something we're really proud of, and look forward to seeing how that keeps being flushed out in time. I will, before I pass it off here, I know we're in early this year talking about the and the secretary was in also talking about the, core modernization project. We don't necessarily have a slide on that in this packet. But I just wanna remind everyone, the $55,000,000, approximately, project that had DMV undertook, completed back in November, we came in on time and under budget. That's not just DMV, that's ADS, that is our partnership with FAST, the contractor, and also legislature, because you all approved the money to be used on that. The changes we have seen and we're continuing to see as we continue to change how we do things with modern technology at our hands has been immense. We're seeing people who make appointments, I just want to clarify, when you make an appointment, in and out of our office within ten to fifteen minutes on a transaction. People have been emailing us about that, how quick they are to get in and out. Even if I had a great interaction, I don't tend to email people, even life gets away. So the fact that people are emailing that they are able to get in and out so quickly, I think is just in talking about DMV world is a really great achievement for the employees, for the state. I think this is something that I just want to make sure that we continue to amplify in the years. We always hear you can't do a project, IT project, any project you're going to say without it going over or the timeframe. And I think there is a way to do it. So, I just want to make sure that this is amplified and continued to be utilized. It's been great. And then the outcomes for monitors or constituents we're seeing have been immense and really paying down dividends. So thank you as I stepped into this role with this almost being completed. But as I'm seeing the benefits of it, it's been immense. So thank you for proving that money in years ago, and certainly the rest of the agencies that helped with this project. So I'll make sure we are amplifying that as well.

[Speaker 0]: I hear plenty of things about paper plates and issues that are out there as the lack of inspections and all, but I can't remember the last time I've heard somebody complain that they spent too long in the DMV. One of our colleagues came up to me the other day and said, I did everything wrong. I didn't make an appointment, I just showed up, it was right before lunch. I was still out of there in forty five minutes for whatever I needed to do. Anecdotally, don't receive a whole lot of DMV complaints other than the ones that are more visible in general, not

[Speaker 5]: in the actual service in the center itself. Yeah, would say, my experiences in the last couple of years, it was in my D and P, but I think the only down part is it may put some meetings out of jobs, big jokes.

[Speaker 1]: That's fair. I guess

[Speaker 5]: could be pushing back now.

[Speaker 6]: It's

[Speaker 5]: not funny anymore. There's not

[Speaker 3]: a lot of stuff that you just need to be in beer.

[Speaker 0]: Two are playing your bingo still.

[Speaker 3]: To the point where Oxford has to accept it now.

[Speaker 1]: Chair, since you mentioned that paper plates, I wasn't going to talk about it yet, but I'll just make a quick comment on that. That's another area where I would consider actually a success. We had colleagues of yours and other parts of legislation reach out this summer. We were starting to get lots of feedback as I settled into my role about the paper plates, and we were able to quickly, though some people were utilizing them and didn't appreciate it, quickly make some changes to that program. It is still paused for the moment. We have a work item. It's in order of priority for items to get changes to our new system. It is in the list. And I know we're gonna have more conversations about this coming up. But that was an area where I was, since I come from a law enforcement background, very proud that we were able to make a change to because we were, in essence, creating two user experiences for Vermonters. Ones that said, hey, we can print out these paper plates, and we're okay with that, with you running them past the sixty days, and we're theoretically saying you're breaking the law and you're good. And those that paid everything up front, registered the vehicles and kind of did the other way. So I'm happy we've made that change, and I'm excited to have that conversation here in this committee later on about how to move forward on that going forward. Personally, I call that one a success in the last year. I'm going to pass this off to our Director of Enforcement, Wade Cochran,

[Speaker 0]: and he's going to touch a little

[Speaker 1]: bit about all the good things going on in the enforcement world.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you, Commissioner.

[Speaker 6]: Thank you.

[Speaker 2]: Afternoon, everyone. Wade Cochran. And as the Commissioner said, I'm the Director of Enforcement and Safety. I guess getting my guys to brag was a little bit of a I had to pull some teeth, but I got plenty of information. One of the first topics I'm going to talk about is an identity theft fraud case. I'm not going to go into depth on it, but I did bring some printouts that I'll pass around. And it's the US Attorney's Office. It's a press release. And it's kind of an example of what our investigations team does. And very proud of their work. As far as and I don't have all of the topics up on the slide. But one other of things I'd like to bring up is the commercial motor vehicle unit. If you all remember some of the pictures I showed you last year, the tires, all the scary things that the big trucks have. Our team, we had them set a goal this year, how many inspections, how many vehicles. Their goal was 5,432, and they used that number from past numbers, but they actually inspected 10,219. So they almost doubled that. So proud of that. Out of that, the three thirty one of them were hazardous material checks on trucks and 184 of those were buses. So some pretty good numbers that they put up.

[Speaker 5]: And

[Speaker 2]: one of the other topics that we do have up here is the active high priority person's warrant sweep. So the governor's initiative, the commissioner came to me and said, we need to help out. Can we help out in Burlington? I've learned that the answer is yes to the commissioner, we will. So I got together with a team with a commissioner as well, and we put a plan in place. Our uniform division did a lot of speed enforcement in the area outside of Burlington. But our investigators at that time put together, thanks to Captain Scott Davidson, he put together a warrant sweep because there was 30 on the list that were high priority. And our team did a lot of background, a lot of investigation, and went out. Unfortunately, they did not get a lot of people on the list because what they found is that the high number were transient at the time or not living in the area any longer. They did make one high priority arrest in that eight hour day, which may not seem a lot, but it is when you're doing all that footwork. So a lot of positive feedback from our uniform team being in Burlington or outside of Burlington working those areas. Some people had said that they were doing close to 100 miles an hour just to get to work. That's what one of them told one of our inspectors. And why are you here? So that's exactly why we were there. Work zone enforcement was another I'm sorry.

[Speaker 3]: Just a question.

[Speaker 7]: You mentioned, so you were doing speeding checks outside of Burlington on 89, where were those and how frequently were you?

[Speaker 2]: Sure. So what we did, I believe it was a daily basis that we were down there. Just

[Speaker 1]: to rephrase what the director was saying, we were

[Speaker 0]: not in the core part of the

[Speaker 1]: Bronx and downtown where VSP did the patrols. We were primarily out in Beltline on twenty seventh, New Horfenden, and parts of Route 7 on the Southern. So we were in Burlington, just not that downtown.

[Speaker 7]: And on a daily

[Speaker 2]: It was a daily basis. For what, like ongoing? No, it was over about a two month period of time, and what we tried to do was main commuter hours, the heavy traffic time.

[Speaker 1]: During the time that these people had the accountability for it. So we were introduced a lot

[Speaker 6]: of it, but

[Speaker 1]: we were in the background doing the speed for us.

[Speaker 2]: Got it. Okay, thanks. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: Representative White?

[Speaker 5]: What

[Speaker 3]: kinds of people fall into the

[Speaker 7]: category of high priority persons?

[Speaker 2]: So the accountability court and Commissioner, correct me if I'm wrong, but the accountability court came up with a list of people that were repeat offenders, which they classified as a high priority. And once they compiled the list, they essentially gave it to those agencies working in Burlington. And that's the list that we worked from to identify those people and find out where they were.

[Speaker 7]: And you said there were some super skaters maybe. Were those the types of

[Speaker 3]: things they were on the list for?

[Speaker 2]: I'm sorry, no, they identified the outside area as well too as not seeing a lot of law enforcement presence. So that's where we kind of helped out since Vermont State Police had downtown and foot patrols and high visibility. So we provided high visibility essentially outside of the city.

[Speaker 7]: Okay. So you're doing speed patrol and looking for high priority persons who are on a list

[Speaker 2]: the pieces of The accountability. The accountability for S. A. And

[Speaker 7]: those are repeat offenders of us having or getting into the courts? Correct.

[Speaker 6]: So

[Speaker 1]: trying to a little bit.

[Speaker 6]: So they identified,

[Speaker 0]: I think it was about

[Speaker 1]: one 100 individuals or maybe 80, I forget the exact number, that were the repeat offenders that caused majority of the court docket there. And so these were individuals that were on that list.

[Speaker 2]: Okay, thank you. That clarifies it.

[Speaker 5]: So I'm assuming they had warrants and they didn't show up to court or something.

[Speaker 2]: That's correct. Some several times. And just one, I believe it was right before one of the holidays, and it might have been New Year's Eve or Christmas Eve. One of our inspectors was able to get a DUI in the morning. It was 09:10 o'clock in the morning on the beltline. So it was good work done. Important. Division staffing, as of next week, we will be fully staffed. And the only reason we weren't for a while was retirements, people moving. But we're very lucky, and I have an amazing staff with a lot of talent coming in. One of the priorities that the commissioner and myself identified was our canine. Sorry, did Where was I on

[Speaker 0]: the phone?

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, just the third bullet, work zone enforcement. Yeah. What's that about?

[Speaker 2]: I've kind of jumped ahead because I've got a little bit Oh, that's fine. Yeah, go for it. So what we identified with the K-nine was we would like to see one in every sector. It's a tremendous help to the officers, any possible narcotics coming into the state, any other illegal activity. We have two, which you can see pictured above. Sergeant Haley is on top with canine Annie. She is actually retiring this month. Raj will be training another dog shortly. And then below him is Inspector Nick Hendry with Lucy. So Lucy is actually a firearms canine who can detect gunpowder residue, firearms, anything like that. Lucy has had several good finds. She's assisted a lot in the Burlington area with violent crimes. So that's been a big help. And then to continue the canine program, we just hired one gentleman who's coming on with us who has a canine that's fully certified. He will be starting in April. And then we have two more that'll be going to training in May, May 1. So we're excited to get them on board. In the work zone, what I wanted to bring up So last year it was identified with the pilot project, the study with the cameras. Again, the commissioner came to me and said, What can we do to do our part as safe police? Unfortunately, it didn't have the manpower, but they said, I believe it was, to do all the time, put it in there. So what we came up with, and we worked with Captain Nesto, was our team would go into a work zone that was identified by AOT, and we would work a minimum of two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon at heavy high priority times. So heavy traffic times. They went in and it was basically any traffic infraction, mainly speed enforcement in those areas. Very successful. Our guys did a great job. They were excited to work it. We're gonna continue that again this year, and hopefully we'll get some more positive results. We found obviously an issue with the speed carts or the monitoring. So now we've put an actual person in those work zones.

[Speaker 5]: So your experience, that wouldn't be anything you would normally do. The state police normally would take care of highway work zone. But under your experience, there were opportunities to find people speeding in those zones. There was. And because there's a sheriff there, having the extra officer, yourself or whoever, could then pursue or enforce the receipt or whatever travel violation. So if

[Speaker 2]: the sheriff is there, he's generally running a different type of detail. So he will be running the blue lights, hopefully, when people don't know that it doesn't always happen. So our guys were there to write the tickets, give a warning, whatever the situation permitted. Those all in person, no caps. All in person.

[Speaker 5]: Right. Well, this just sort of supports the legislation we did pass that says there's an issue with work zones and then we get some confirmation that sure enough, they are worthwhile to do more enforcement and it sounds like we plan to do more.

[Speaker 4]: We do.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Represent Wells.

[Speaker 8]: Let's see how long, how many years you

[Speaker 0]: get out those canines when those dogs run? So it

[Speaker 2]: all depends, right? Health reasons could affect anything. That's why the research in the background, you got to find the healthy dogs, the healthy breeders on average, eight to nine years. Good run. So it is. We were very lucky with one of them to step back to that. We actually just had one donated from the Lonelle County Sheriff's. The deputy decided he was out of law enforcement, had had enough, and he donated his dog to Department of Motor Vehicles, which Raj Haley was sergeant with Annie. So Annie would be retired, the new dog will come in. So it worked perfectly. Is there a particular breed that

[Speaker 4]: you look for to be these law enforcement animals?

[Speaker 2]: There isn't, however, there's certain preferences. So two of the dogs that'll be coming on will be Malinois. They'll be what they call a dual purpose canine. So it'll be drugs and patrol. And Annie was search and rescue. She was marijuana certified. So therefore, when the dog's marijuana certified, you can't search for other drugs. Just

[Speaker 6]: a quick question. I'm not sure if this is under your bailiwick or not, but recently there was an investigation for making illegal driver privilege cards. I think that just recently happened. Is that something that you oversee? And how does enforcement go all about? Just how does that all work to make sure that we have the system in place?

[Speaker 1]: I'm going to divert to that.

[Speaker 8]: Sorry, have to tell you it's been years. We worked years ago

[Speaker 0]: with the control. This right here, right there, sorry.

[Speaker 8]: Lieutenant Jeremy's Tires Enforcement City. So we worked with the control way back to actually take a police officer and we actually procure some of these ones that were made in other countries. And we did that to line them up to see how good they were compared to the ones that we produced. This was part of the original transition to the new system we are because we used to own the equipment and print them in house. And we went to that centralized issuance because of that. There's a rule of thought in all of the Once you make an ID, you should be starting to make the next one because that's how good these other So we have not done that to my knowledge again, but we then compared it to some of the police license readers, potential readers that Hooker Control had to see if we found in alarming rates they were as good, if not better. So that went to the drawing board and under the previous administration changed some of the security features within. There are a lot. I do a little PowerPoint presentation for the police academy. There are so many security features and we're constantly reexamining those to do that. So I don't know if answers your question.

[Speaker 6]: Yeah, no, I'm just saying, you're getting out of point, it's like how prevalent is it because it seems like we just have a case a couple of weeks ago where an individual was just arrested for making these, and it sounds like we are past the point of where we need to change things up. So does that need to be done legislatively or can you do that internally? Because I'm just wondering how widespread these cards are getting out to the general public. And I don't know if you can comment because it sounds like it's an active case, but yeah.

[Speaker 8]: I believe it can be started internally and it's usually generally every few years that you're I talking about don't know who starts that mechanism, but

[Speaker 6]: certainly it's something can put that

[Speaker 5]: on our radar. I hate that.

[Speaker 6]: Have it extremely easy

[Speaker 8]: to completely average, Jim. I would just add, it's not just our credential, it's our title stock and all the other security things that we do. There's a constant, If you can go on in certain sites, you can even buy some of that stock online, there's underground channels that we learned when doing this that will sell this stuff.

[Speaker 0]: I guess that begs the question, is there somebody in the DMV who's sort of the security point person or a fraud? It sounds like quite a battle of fraud potentials, etcetera. Is there somebody that is, or is there a team that is sort of the security? It's good anymore,

[Speaker 8]: we had a patent, we had a minute who was done with that.

[Speaker 2]: Right. And he's currently, I mean, most of any of the IDs that are fraudulent, hopefully the people will send them in to us like liquor control. Pat's reviewed some of those.

[Speaker 8]: I can just speak to another since we're talking about all the good things. This last year, we're part of AMBA, which is like all the DMV association. Sorry, you've heard of them. Fraudulent document training is something that we implemented starting this last year of making sure all of our DMV staff, whether they were just hired, they go through a fraudulent doc training. Now we're doing it every two years, which we have members with enforcement and safety. I used to teach that. Now we have Detective Jason O'Brien who does that. And we've built up our training so that we know that our first front lines, the folks at our counters, are up to stuff with all the different trends that

[Speaker 0]: are up. Okay.

[Speaker 2]: Thank you. Okay, and so kind of talking about Pat McManaman, I'll move into his area, which is education. So we now have 48 certified driver training schools. And presently, all students can register for the next scheduled class with no backlog, which that hasn't happened in the past. There's been a backlog of a year to two years. Part of that is now we have 79 driver educators and forty one third party examiners. So a driving school in the Northeast Kingdom can now test their own students. It's working phenomenal. The students are a lot more comfortable sometimes taking the test. They've been with this person for several weeks. They get in and take the test. They're not as nervous as having to come to DMV and take it with one the testers. So that program is working well. And then the rider education program is in compliance with national standards. That's the motorcycle class. I hear them on the phone every day, people calling, asking questions, so classes fill up quickly. They're not all full, but once they do get full, then we'll have to see about more, I guess. So and I know last year it was asked or the year before it was asked if we would put on a class for everyone in the House and Senate that wanted to take it. I said, that's a great idea. We'll do that. So that's out there. And that's what I have, unless you have questions.

[Speaker 5]: Thank you.

[Speaker 8]: Good afternoon. Lieutenant General Insurance with Rutland and Enforcement Safety. I now am section chief over the dealer business services unit, which I was before this committee last year, sort of kicked that off where I did a presentation to show you kind of how that evolved and went into place. So now I get to come back and tell you all the great things that we've done so far and what our hopes are in trajectory to make this even better. So I was brought in from, I served as a Southern investigation supervisor before with enforcement and safety, so I covered the South for investigations. And then I was transitioned in July 2024 to take on this. Due to our modernization efforts prior, our system was DOS based. So, I am old enough to know what that is, but that was the whole reason why we spent the $55,000,000 is because we needed to bring things into And current that has unlocked all the things that you talked about earlier, shorter lines. And I would say even before when we were DOS based, if you went to any other DMV in the country, you waited a lot longer than you did in Vermont. I can tell you as a sworn officer, I had an appointment to go to Connecticut to meet with their investigation unit, and I had to wait in line for an hour. So it certainly has only gotten better and better as we've modernized. So why did the dealer services unit sort of get created? Before we were very compartmentalized, meaning we had everybody working on one single transaction to get it through to the end. Now with a modernized system, we can have one person sort of walk that transaction from A to Z. We have certain barriers in place with supervisors to approve things, but it's just a much more seamless process. So with dealer services, the way we were doing that before, the idea was to create a one stop shop. Our dealers are partners with DMV, and they're allowed to collect the purchase and use tax. They're allowed to help that customer at the dealership leave with a temporary plate or even a permanent plate now. So those evolutions required us to make changes. Some of the successes we heard initially way back was you can't call and get a hold of anyone. We had one information line, as I know was spoken about, where you would call 828200, and you might've had a dealer issue, or you might've had a personal issue with a registration or a license, whatever, and you were funneled to one sort of pain point. One of the first things we did with the dealers' units, we created using existing numbers, two phone lines, ones that dealers could call about their applications, and also anybody could call about their And from that, we expanded out to make sure that one stop approach, we had staffing that knew how to do these transactions, that access to the system that could resolve these issues. And unfortunately, and I'll talk about in the next slide, we still are very much paper reliant here in Vermont, where dealers are doing those transactions in their dealerships and mailing them still in snail mail to Vermont DMV, which we open them up, we process them in an orderly fashion, and we're still much faster than we ever were, but some of these little modernization improvements have really made our dealer partners happy and have allowed us to do things a lot faster. So again, reducing our backlog, we have statutory requirements that dealers have to provide the paperwork within a certain time period, fifteen days to DMV or thirty if there's a lien involved. And that's so that when we issue a plate or they issue a plate, we can make sure that customer's never driving around illegally, not the road, right? So we used to have time crunches in the old system before the modernization to now where it was really hard to stay within those statutory frames. Now with the new system and the new model, we are at a zero to twenty day backlog. Some of those are due to your high volume times of the year, and already I've made improvements to bring in some of our other staffing. I process transactions myself if we get into those situations where we need to catch up. So that's been a huge improvement. So the dedicated dealer service team is run by a supervisor and we recently navigated to the 1st Floor of DMV into a new space, which we were segmented because of all that modernization. I had some folks in one area, some in another. So now that we've been for about a month now under one roof, we've also seen gains. So we took it a step further and we opened up a public facing window. We used to have one years ago, and that was pretty much so dealers could go to the 3rd Floor of DMV and get more plates or in an urgency matter, go take care of something. And now we've, in a sense, fixed those issues, but we also wanted to give our partners an ability if they had something that affects the customer or something that was needed by DMV urgently, they can now go to that window. A lot of them use it to drop off transactions, because we're still in that snail mail process, but it's certainly, we've had positive feedback and that's been going on for about a month. So we're talking about setting appointments and doing some cool things like the branch offices app to sort of make that better. Another focal point is our ability to change incorrect fees. Before, if the transaction was wrong by our dealer partners, we're taking that snail mail, we're sending it right back to Now, as you can imagine, statutory requirements, that's now slowing the system, we're dealing with mailing, and then we're even in more trouble. So we created through modernization, the ability to create a direct portal with our dealers. They have an account on file, and if they send us the wrong amounts, we can bill them directly. And they hold those fees on their portal. It's all based on that MyDMV portal, and we're able to not have to send paperwork back, and we're able to itemize the bill to them. They can challenge it, we go through it, and we give them now up to thirty days to pay them if there's a balance or to contest that. So that's very, very sort of has developed over this last year, and it's been very successful. Dealers like the ability to not have the paperwork go back and forth. The bulletin listserv, one of the original goals was how do we connect with our dealer partners and communicate with them. We put bulletins up on a DMV website, but not everybody knows that they're coming or has access to that. So we really started a campaign to get all of our dealers to sign up with an email, pick people they want, and anytime we make a change, we're able to send that directly to the people at the dealerships that really need that messaging. And that's been huge for those who say, Hey, I didn't know. I didn't know we created this new form when I sell a used vehicle that's gonna be inspected for printing.

[Speaker 4]: So that's been huge.

[Speaker 8]: The interactive map. So working under the umbrella of AOT, one of the things that we realized is we had a skilled group of folks that have drones and image the whole state and bridges, and we use their software and their ability to create an interactive map that you can go online. We put in all of our licensed dealers so that they can actually go in and see the store hours and be able to search for dealerships within their geographic area. It also now allows them the point of contact, their field inspector, that could investigate any problems that they're having with the vehicle. So that's just a little, again, levying the the power of AOT. We used them to help create us a map that we now quarterly update as dealers change locations or go out of business or new ones come. And then lastly, being able for dealers to procure more plates, temporary plates, now all that through the modernizations online, they can order that stuff, they can do renewals online. We're really going all in with their MyDMV account to be able to allow them to get the services like you or I would go to a branch and be able to get a registration done. So that's been huge. We're constantly having to tweak those, but that's been a huge upgrade where we don't have dealers calling us saying, Hey, don't have any plates, or I can't provide, can't sell a car. So that's been huge. We hired for staffing two dedicated folks to kinda handle that, as well as processing transactions. So before I go to the next slide, I'll open it up for any questions on any of those.

[Speaker 6]: Is there any, I'm not saying complaints, but like we had many years ago, five, six years ago, we sort of addressed the dealer place because we thought there was too many amongst certain dealerships and, you know, it was maybe potential loss of purchase and use. Are they fine with the amount that they're allowed for daylight bullets? But I think we increased it a little bit. So I was

[Speaker 1]: just wondering if there's any feedback of

[Speaker 6]: like, oh, we need to dump that cap.

[Speaker 8]: The way it was prior is they had a very finite allotment and we audit them. So we wanted to make sure that one, they were following through with the audit function of making sure we knew who got those plates. Since this new system, we opened it up so that they can order more at a time, but those audit functions are still in place. I would say my concern from the enforcement side is a dealer having boxes and boxes of these plates, granted they're locked in their dealership, it should only be certain people that have access to them, but we've seen that the tail end where they have a thousand plates and then they lose some of them and we're trying to find them. So finding that balance, if we identify somebody who's not really good with managing their plates, then we'll put them back on that prescription and say, you can only have this many, send us the logs and we'll send you more. Great, thanks.

[Speaker 7]: Next one? Thank you, Jeremy. You spoke about how some of the dealers are still using those big stacks of paperwork when they're selling cars to customers. Do you see an opportunity with the new DMV system to transition?

[Speaker 8]: That's my next slide. But yes, it's not. Any other question?

[Speaker 0]: I have a dealer that rides my carpool. So expect I'm gonna run all of this by

[Speaker 1]: him and see if his dealership agrees. No. And I and I hope he

[Speaker 8]: that was another know, just I don't have a slide on it, but that was another thing is, engaging with VAADA, the dealers association is something that we do. I do daily, weekly their issues, their members that have complaints get funneled. We work through them. They're also part of the CAP program. So mediating some of those issues with a customer, Vata, and the dealer has always been a great program in the state of Vermont for resolving some of these issues quickly without going through civil process or long lengthy situations. But as we know, when we're buying a car, sometimes they're not wanting to go talk to that salesman because they're mad or they're angry in the moment. So sometimes having that third party involved helps move that to a resolution. So I guess we can go on to the next. The dealer interface project. This was something that was dreamed back then and is very much as the commissioner talked about priority lists, getting this moving forward. This is something that the dealers have been asking for, that DMV didn't have the ability to create before, but now under this modernization process, is what I see as the next evolution in buying a car in Vermont. Nationwide, other states are trying to do this, and we, because we're a small state and we're very well connected with our dealerships, in other places there's usually third parties, we have a one to one relationship with dealers and consumers. We are probably the best poised to be the premier of setting the stage with all of the other states and bringing this forward. That I guess is my mini pitch. So what does this entail? This is taking the MyDMB that dealers already use and consumers use, and being able to go to a dealership and have them be able to hit a button and electronically send all those documents to the DMV, no more snail mail, no more paper. The problems with that are the federal government, shocker, and NIS level two, and when you sign something, knowing that it all sort of circles around the odometer disclosure. That is required by the federal, and we need to somehow secure and know that the person signing that verifying that odometer is who they say they are. So the solution here is using the MyDMV, they already have a credential through us. They've already vetted who they are. Every one of us, when we go to a bank, right, you have the two level authentication, right? You've given them your phone number, they send you a text message. This is in a sense similar to that process. We would have an ability where somebody could maybe get a unique PIN. They're providing that credential to the dealer, and they're verifying who they are so that PIN's applied to the electronic signature sent to the DMV, and we're good to go. We've met all of our federal level of protection, and the dealers have been asking for this. This would greatly improve their process. It would improve the car buying process where you're not waiting around for hours, I hope. And it allows us the functionality of being able to, if they sent us the wrong stuff, to send it back to them and get those things corrected much faster than we currently have had success doing right now. Mailing costs, if you guys are gonna look at this, there is considerable savings on what we pay in shipping this stuff, plates, sending stuff back. I see a potential avenue to really save their elimination

[Speaker 0]: of

[Speaker 8]: the loss paperwork with everything digitized. We still have current statutes that require the dealers to hold on to those physical copies. So we wouldn't have to house them at DMV. There would be a cloud per se or secure record of them used for court for whatever purpose. But we would have to discuss on how long they had to keep those physical copies before they could be changed over or destroyed. Right now, we have boxes and boxes that we send to archives to hold onto until they're, again, destroyed. So I see, I would ask this committee to look at some of those solutions if they look into this. Electronic signatures, I talked a little bit about that. We also have the ability with our partners to real time issuance where they already can put that metal plate on that vehicle. We require they're sending us those paperwork. We could really speed up that process even more to what it already is. And that allows confidence with DMV, with the dealers and the consumer to know that they're not waiting for plates in the mail. They're good to go, their registration, everything is live through one of this sort of project scenario. Auditing capabilities, obviously, we could create flags. We are seeing some activity, we could create some things around that. And then right now, we have the backlog, we have the physical mail, which my folks open up as they receive it for process, and there's tons and tons of money and checks that are just sitting there in those boxes until we're able to process that. In this, I would look at potentially being able to create a solution where once that's sent electronically, the money has already been transferred because it's not necessarily the dealers, it's the money for purchase and use tax, it's the fees, and we have secured that where we're not having bounced checks, we're not having to go get those through a portal, I can see some solutions to it. So stop there if you have any questions. That was a lot to

[Speaker 3]: digest. So thank you. So

[Speaker 7]: it sounds like some great time savings, cost savings that you're projecting here. You mentioned that this is something that the committee might want to spend more time on. Are you seeing any legislation necessary? Are you recommending any legislation that we might wanna be considering to help push this project forward? Or do you feel like you've got a pretty good sense of where you need to go without our support?

[Speaker 8]: Feel we have a good sense internally to build this and I believe we have very good buy in with the dealers association and the consumers. I think there's a communication piece that needs to go along with this. It is gonna be a fundamental shift on how you buy a car, right? So again, I'm not gonna speak to putting anything forward, but it is something I've obviously been an advocate for. I see this as bringing Vermont to, again, the top of bragging rights with all of our other states. And we really have the ability to take something like this and make it the premier on how you buy a car.

[Speaker 4]: Matt Russo, deputy commissioner for DMV. Thanks for having me back. Best for last. So we already spoken a little bit about BT Hall Pass and our accomplishments with the new online e permitting system. This project was on time and under budget and is in full swing. The only thing that was left as we last discussed, was adding municipal permits. The turnaround time previously was four hours. And again, those applications came in through fax, email, and they were manually processed, checks were cashed manually. And we had a four hour turnaround time to keep industry running. That's all done now instantaneously. As soon as the application is sent electronically, they're issued, they are permanent. New England 511 is also integrated with an API. So road restrictions, our engineers at AOT are constantly uploading any changes in birth restrictions, road restrictions, that's all done live. And this is, again, easy streamlined one stop shop rather than having multiple locations to process. You're saying the money is now all ACH, right? Everything's done online.

[Speaker 0]: Post to an old manual check.

[Speaker 4]: Right. So you don't have to send your check-in anymore. You don't have to do a call over the phone. We used to do credit cards over the phone. Don't do that anymore. And we kept our escrow accounts. So you can still continue to use escrow.

[Speaker 0]: Representative Pouech?

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, thanks for this. And so speaking for my town clerk, when will the municipality piece come online? We're

[Speaker 4]: working on it right now and our go live is set for July 1.

[Speaker 5]: Okay. Thank you.

[Speaker 4]: So we're gonna start with soft go live prior to that, onboarding a couple municipalities just to see how things go. And after that, by July 1, the hope is that we'll have all municipalities onboarding. But again, that's up

[Speaker 5]: to the municipality. I would say maybe three or four years ago, I was in talking to the clerk and I asked specifically, is there anything that would help you? They both weighed in. These are a pain in the neck. They're really hard. And I think it's $10

[Speaker 4]: It's 10 for a fleet, 5 or 6 for an individual.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah, they were almost like, we'll just pay the money if we don't have to do this. It's not very much money.

[Speaker 4]: Yeah, and once they're onboarded, they'll have their own account. They can sign in, it's got data and reporting. You can see how many permits are being issued, how many have been issued, how many funds you've taken in. And that's all gonna be all done online. We currently have a separate weight restriction database. Municipalities sign into that database, and they keep a record of their own restrictions for that municipality. That will also be integrated at the same time by July 1 when we go live with it. And once that's all done, depending on how many municipalities decide they wanna join, you can get all of your permits done at once. So you know you know what your route's gonna be, your single trip permit. You know which municipalities you're gonna be going through that require permits. You can have all that done in one stop rather than having to do all separately to each municipality obtain that permit and have multiple transactions.

[Speaker 0]: You anticipate these municipalities want to get on board with this?

[Speaker 4]: I would assume that mister Ganahl won't do that. It's it's gonna be helpful to them and us, and it's gonna be helpful to the the end user.

[Speaker 0]: And they because they filed today, do they have some kind of they know this is coming or

[Speaker 4]: this They do. Yeah. We've had conversations with the legal cities and towns. We've done some outreach and we're working with them to build it.

[Speaker 0]: This will be one of those things that will be reported to us in January about how well it hunt. Absolutely.

[Speaker 8]: Our dealer

[Speaker 4]: portal and our municipalities.

[Speaker 0]: Just

[Speaker 1]: piggyback on that, this should not be that far different from Wickerwater recently transitioned to an online portal for towns to improve their tobacco and liquor licenses or bar licenses. So towns are already kind of moved that way with some sister agencies here in the state, they should piggyback. Different system, but piggyback instead of

[Speaker 8]: having that online or account access tool.

[Speaker 0]: At the end of

[Speaker 4]: the day, it's advantageous for all parties. It's an easy, seamless job, all done at one stop.

[Speaker 5]: Yeah. So I thank you for that, and thank you for making me look really good. It doesn't happen that often.

[Speaker 6]: It's fun facts. I drew a line in the sand and said It's gotta do it. Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 4]: That's all I have. If there are any questions?

[Speaker 0]: This

[Speaker 5]: is the end of, because that is just a general Just a sort of general question. Inspections programs, the sort of enforcement of that, whose responsibility is that? And specifically, I know some larger businesses can do their own self inspection, and I was just sort of curious who is overseeing that?

[Speaker 1]: So I would show only our fortunate safety division

[Speaker 0]: on the inspection side.

[Speaker 2]: So our inspectors, the fact that we have, they actually, that was in my notes, but I didn't say it, so I apologize. So they did inspection station checks. They did ten fifty six of them. That was from 2021 to Chrysler. And that's going and checking on each inspection station. They make sure

[Speaker 0]: they have the

[Speaker 2]: right posting in the window, the right equipment they're doing properly, to investigations. If you didn't do it properly, if we get a call from one of your constituency, this issue would then our team would go out.

[Speaker 8]: And we segmented, so I have three field inspectors for dealers. As you can imagine, inspection stations are within dealerships. So those three also will do any investigations that are related to buying a car. We had that inspection formed for dealers and are now required to have that conversation when they sell a car, which has really improved the folks that will buy a car and then go to their next visit and realize that they pass or wants to do inspection.

[Speaker 5]: And then there are some businesses, like dealers, I guess, businesses do their own inspections, but some businesses have a whole fleet and they do Commercial their own

[Speaker 1]: fleet can do their own inspections, yes.

[Speaker 8]: They're limited or they can only do their fleet. Yes. So they're not what we would call a public facing inspection station. They're only doing stuff that is registered to them. So it's gotta be within their fleet and used for the fleet.

[Speaker 5]: And if there was a, because I had a constituent ask me if there was a complaint or something that didn't seem right, where would they report that, I guess?

[Speaker 2]: That's where they would call enforcement speak to one of my office staff who would then allocate work or talk to the workers in that area.

[Speaker 8]: Working can use the interactive map and we have all the regions with who the inspectors are.

[Speaker 5]: So,

[Speaker 8]: it's a within a certain geographic location, they can go to the map and it'll tell them who their

[Speaker 5]: resources Yeah, mean, we couldn't be sensitive because they work for the business and questioning the weather, but thank you.

[Speaker 0]: General questions, you talked about commercial inspections, 10,000 inspections. I guess that would be directed to you. When

[Speaker 1]: it comes to the various waste stations rest area,

[Speaker 0]: is that a kind of rotating schedule? How does it determine how your spending is, the majority of focus is and times on the actual inspection pieces or the waste stations in particular?

[Speaker 2]: Yeah, so it is a rotating schedule because we receive money, federal money, we do a certain amount at those way stations required to. We also have three smart roadside snail which basically will tell you if the trunk has a flat tire without them even having to pull

[Speaker 4]: in. Which

[Speaker 2]: is the guys are very happy. But generally it's two or three times a week in a way station and then there'll work rolling roads in our state roaming and get some of the violations there as well.

[Speaker 0]: We have a significant amount of Canadian traffic that I guess on the highways and a fair amount down in the southern part that are crossing to get to help other places. If you were, I don't know if this is a question you got, you can answer it, but in the trucking industry people sort of know some states you can pretty much get away with anything and some states you can't. Right. Where do we fit?

[Speaker 2]: I would like to say we fit and say we can't get away with it.

[Speaker 0]: I hope you would say that, but let's dig a little deeper. Mean, it must be so consider that we have a high bar of enforcement in the personal High bar, I think so,

[Speaker 2]: and I think we could back that up with numbers down on the inspection with our team that's out there. But also back it up a little bit when some of the

[Speaker 1]: people that I've

[Speaker 2]: spoken to, we all stop and say, Marty Silver in Danville, guys are out there busting people today. They're out there doing their job. We've been asked by New Hampshire to work with them at different times, whether they're working on the New Hampshire side or working on the Vermont side, it's kind of like the same thing where we're a few of the opposite sides. Because we are

[Speaker 0]: Is there still more issues with owner operators versus the major callers as far as your safety and area of the issue or not? And I don't sure remember exactly how you testified about that before. And I would

[Speaker 2]: have to ask, oops, sorry, Captain Nesto, what are you seeing now? And I don't remember what this thing was right there. I believe it was on our operators with the highest number of violators that are front, highest other violations.

[Speaker 0]: Still a little bit of time for general questions about DMP. If not, or for your I'm sorry.

[Speaker 3]: Yeah. I just had a question about where length of you know, their what their opinion of. I I have no idea. I'm just wondering if they are doing probably the damage to my roads and

[Speaker 1]: ask you if

[Speaker 4]: you the whole question.

[Speaker 3]: Sorry. I have a question about overweight and over length permits, and whether you feel that their fees are adequate to address the damage that's caused by

[Speaker 4]: I think people wanna work in coordination with highway. That's a that's a tough question to answer. Yeah, they haven't changed in a while, so I'm not really sure how that equates to the road damage and the cost for

[Speaker 3]: road I've heard people, and this is not necessarily related to this way, even some of the overweight, over live permits that come down, Route 9, between Marlborough, Marlborough, it's terrifying because you've got these double wide houses or half a house on a truck, and there's there's ledge and there's a truck, and there's no space, and people are you know, especially in wintertime, it's just I mean, I know that it's a federal highway and can't do something better, but it just if they had to pay more, we think they would use some.

[Speaker 4]: Yeah. It would be we have to compare how much we're getting in revenue for that quarter as far as overweight fees and compared to what the repairs are. Sorry, didn't you. Comparing the amount of revenue that we're getting for the permits compared to the amount that it costs to repair the roads. So we have to work in coordination with highway, but it's a

[Speaker 0]: good question.

[Speaker 7]: I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts about covered bridges, and anything we could be doing to protect them from damage. We've got overweight trucks and so forth that have to apply for permits and pay a fee to protect the roads. Are you seeing any correlation between types of trucks that are damaging or covered bridges throughout the state? Is it I mean, I don't think they're oversized trucks that aren't filing permits or they're going off their routes, but just wondering if you had

[Speaker 4]: any I on

[Speaker 0]: don't

[Speaker 4]: really have any thoughts personally. I think that, again, that's we have to work with AOT on that. I know I think there was legislation that was proposed previously about higher ticket fees or other avenues to avoid those covered bridges, but nothing specific.

[Speaker 1]: We're not routing trusts through covered bridges. Those

[Speaker 4]: are all posted.

[Speaker 1]: Again, it's kind of like the notch. We're talking the notch. Language in our bill coming up, we'll discuss that some more. How do you prevent an operator from, or how do you get an operator to pay attention? Signage, I guess, is the

[Speaker 4]: It's very comparable to the notch issue.

[Speaker 7]: We did see a beautiful example of a wrought iron gate that was constructed right before you entered the, I think it's the Lindenville.

[Speaker 0]: The Millers Run.

[Speaker 7]: Which seems to, I know it's kind of expensive, but it was a nice community project. It's pretty. It seems so

[Speaker 0]: 70 ks.

[Speaker 7]: You know, the cost of carrying bridges, it's Wakesfield, one of our covered bridges has just been deemed structurally not intact.

[Speaker 2]: You.

[Speaker 5]: Well,

[Speaker 0]: Commissioner and the whole team, I appreciate you coming in today and giving us the status of where you're at. The plan will be for the rest of the week and into next week to start getting into the miscellaneous, again, bill section by section in detail and then seeing what else additional testimony we'll need on top of the agency piece. So I suspect we're going to see some of you again And appreciate very much the time this afternoon. We are adjourned till 02:35.