Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And we are live back here on Tuesday afternoon, March thirty first, twenty twenty six in house transportation. We have our favorite fiscal analysts from the joint fiscal office. I'm live and here in the flesh to talk about S three twenty six, the MB bill, and walk us through fiscal notes and other impacts and understand it's fairly straightforward money wise anyway. Yes. Welcome back, Logan. For the record, Logan Mover at the Joint

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Fiscal Office. I have a pretty straightforward fiscal note for you. Talk about the DMV bill as it passed the Senate, you all started working on it. Has Damian walked through any of this bill with you all yet?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yes. Okay. This

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: will be fairly easy then. This should be on the committee page. It's also on, I believe, the GA website, if you look into the physical information on the bill page on there. So revenue wise, as little box mentions here, it's de minimis impact on revenues. There is one section which will get to, which will increase the expenses incurred by the DMV by approximately $32,000 relatively small. We'll talk about that in just a second. But just going through the sections that do have sort of very small fiscal impacts is sections one through five. This is those identification cards for detained and sentenced individuals. This is just sort of increasing a, who can get these for free to detained individuals, and then also increasing it to include operator's license and replacement learner's permits. So they could already get the non driver IDs, They just expand it. And then for detained individuals, they'd be expanding it to those people as well. You can see in the second paragraph there, in 2025, there were 465 free non driver IDs given out. And then the DOC estimates that there's an average about 46 individuals who were detained per period. So it's an increase of 46 new people would be able to get these IDs All in told, it's a small number of people and a relatively small fee. So it was really just a de minimis impact to any revenues that would have been generated from those people having to then pay the fee for whatever the license was. And I have the piece there if you're interested, the non driver IDs are $29 the replacement operator's license and learner's permits are $25 So times that by 46, it's small. Section eight, this is a penalty for smugglers notch. Just the increase from $1,000 to 10,000 for all instances of the violation. And then if the violation substantially impedes the flow of traffic, it's increased from 2,000 to 20,000. We don't really estimate revenues from civil penalties because we try to assume that all people are following the law and that there will be no stockages, but there might be stockages, so you might see something, section, fees for towing. So this is where the sort of increase in expenses to the DMV comes in. This section would allow towing services to charge up to $250 to tow a vehicle out of abandoned, an abandoned vehicle out of public property. So it was 125, this would increase it to $2.50 because the state would now be charged essentially twice what they used to be charged. It would increase the potential expenses by $32,000 a year. This would depend on how many vehicles need to be towed.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I assume

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: they just paid the full bill. It's not like you bid for this or anything that I assume if they tow a vehicle, they're gonna say it's $2.50.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I believe that's how it works.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: I said 125 and it probably didn't quite cover the cost.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: My understanding is that 125 was pretty cheap to tow a vehicle. So $2.50 was, I think sort of what the department and then towing people thought was a more reasonable price to charge for that. But I think the DMV could probably speak to the specifics of this section and how it actually works out in the process better than I could.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Do we know where they tow it? They don't tow it to the next rest area.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I cannot answer that, but I'd assume not. Some holding lots around.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Was there any discussion about per diems once they have towed it, storage and per diems or any recovery? And I mean, whether the state should talk any of that?

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Not that I'm aware of, but the department could answer that better than I. I was not there for all the discussion on this section.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: But there is no

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: per diem charge on that bill.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I don't think so, but Damien or the department could follow-up on that for sure.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you. A little more apart from the committee, a few years ago we did a whole bunch of testimony on the OAF fees. A significant amount of abandoned vehicles for a variety of reasons. Some are criminals, some are not, some are broke down, they're unabandoned vehicles and they're not coming back. Was a huge We took quite a bit of different testimony from a number of different people. It was at a point where they weren't even billing, most of the towing companies weren't even billing back to the state for the work. There was a whole issue around not getting paid and they'd given up on even billing the state for the money. The money went unused in the budget for years, right? And they had like 20,030 thousand dollars Yeah, probably only, well maybe Amar might remember too, this was back when I first got here. We spent a fair amount of time on this. I was surprised at the things we learned. There is a cue for your turn to toe the next bad toe job. Getting into that though, I'm not deeply, because then that brings up some urban rural concerns, You start talking towing you're going have colleagues knocking on your door. As an FYI. Maybe a couple of births. You're going to get it's some, a sensitive issue for a number of our colleagues. Anyway, that's for whatever it's worth. Next.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Section 17, this is another penalty for unregistered snowmobiles. This is increasing the civil penalty from $135 per violation to 450 for the first offense and 500 for second or subsequent offenses within three years. Again, we like to assume that everyone is following the law, so I don't have an estimate for this, but I did wanna mention it here because you could very well see some people still violating this section.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Is there any split revenue in that in VAST or any of the other or the writing, the local originator in terms of the law enforcement agency? Because they use Fish and Wildlife, they use state police too.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I would need to go and check. That's a good question. I don't think so, but I'd want to double check the statute and see if it's broken out there.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Where do these fees go?

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So these fees will go into the T fund generally, and then fees get a little complicated. We get some fees go into or penalties, I guess, go into the T fund and then some are broken out into different funds. I don't have a list of them. I could get you a list of the sort of breakdown. There's like surcharges and stuff on the fees that go to certain places, but it's like fees under title 23, which I believe this section is, they go into the transportation stuff.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Searching up things like domestic violence. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: I mean, it just seemed like a big jump in fees and it makes me just, nobody's complained about this. It's huge jump, so we'll be

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: able help. Well, we will hear the testimony, but I do recall that the registration and all the stuff altogether is like $300 so the $135 it was providing some of the incentive to not comply is what it was sort of driven out of. We need to potentially understand we'll get more testimony, but if the fines not higher, if the penalty is not higher than the correct way to do it, then it

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: And your description just says unregistered snowmobiles. Is no VAST sticker considered unregistered? I'm not sure.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's a good question for Damien.

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Registered vehicles or my snow machines registered, but I don't have a VAST sticker. Is this penalty, is it the same?

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Think Commissioner for Damien could walk you through what the statute says in that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm not sure how we're gonna avoid having passed on that with this list. That will bring up other issues. Perhaps we'll get an end of the year report on the snowmobile season, of their safety issues they had, and testimony on this all at once. I don't just maybe a question for David, but is there a point where you go too excessive on their fines? It would be deemed illegal in a sense? Think there is. 20 I thousand, it just went to 1,000,000. Yeah, something like crazy. I mean,

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I believe there is, but that'd be

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: a good question for you. I'd answer it. That would be only the unusual, cruel, unusual. Yeah, was just wondering, it just seems like a drastic increase, where's yeah, where's the signal?

[Unidentified Member (House Transportation Committee)]: Smuggler's Notch, 1,000,000. Yeah,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I put a big sign up, it had $20,000 on it too. Yeah, well, god. Yeah, we're about to best have the page.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Section 19, this is for non domiciled CDL license. This would establish a $40 yearly fee to get your one year non domiciled CDL. There were 16 of these issued in 2025. So again, this is a de minimis fiscal impact. And then 26, this would establish an annual registration fee for limited use specialty vehicles. I'm assuming Damian spoke to you what these are specifically. This would establish from this $26 annual registration fee, and it specifically limits DMV the to issue in a maximum of 12 of these per year. So again, the de minimis fiscal impact from this one. Well, for the entire state, for all applicants? That's my understanding. I believe there is something related to EPA emissions waivers or something along those lines. Damien and the department could get into the details of the specifics behind this language. But yes, it is limited to 12.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Supercars built up in your area. Milton? Yes, indeed.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That is it. That's it, That's the extent of the fiscal impact in the scope.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Sounds like a policy. Anybody have any other questions, concerns? That was pretty easy. Shadi, welcome back, we're all done. Perfect. I to share the good news on the February numbers. Oh, well, that was there. I thought you were There's another. Oh, thought you were good. Go in the other direction. What's the Would you like to comment on trailers? Isn't that the one issue about the change in the regulations in that?

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Not at this time. I don't wanna make any comments. I can come back and speak to you about whatever you'd like. I don't have anything at this time. Okay.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I was just talking about the the the revenue numbers that came in February.

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I can also present those. Yeah. I will just say February numbers were a little weird based on reporting, so I can walk you through all that. I said that's a sort of bigger conversation. The numbers are out there if you wanna go look at them. I have a little blur. They're they're essentially just low.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Scheduled for next week, the Logan for

[Logan (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the updated revenue, transportation revenue that came out for February. And diesel tax just came in very low due to some reporting issues. They'll be in March's numbers. If you go look at it now, it shows a very significant decrease in those. We expect to make up most of that in March. Is that because of clinical? Yeah, because most fuel returns are processed on the twenty fifth and they take, I think it's three days to actually process the year or the month ended on the twenty eighth, which was a Saturday. So we just lost a big portion of the field returns. In a week. Pretty much. So we should see all of that come up in March. We don't

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: have March numbers yet. We'll have March numbers for a couple weeks, right? Potentially, yes. Will get James and Logan on the schedule for those pieces. We will also have vehicle the dealers in for the February sales, I'm sorry, March sales. So we'll see the January, February, March, what are the new vehicles, used vehicles, where are the numbers, whether they've been up or down. We'll add that in, as well as their update on fuel piece. And I also asked them to prepare to comment on the vehicle processes we heard about today in DMV, so we'll have them in within the next week as well Vehicle trends, sales trends, revenue trends, fuel cost trends, DMV piece, and Logan Hall, Golden Transportation revenues. So those are coming attractions. There's also hint there you heard of some issues we heard about in the Senate related to some DMV process and changes. There's also some fee issues. My understanding. Is that true, Logan? There's some fee related updates, not updates that were made in the last DMV fee issue from a couple of years ago that weren't all updated timely or correctly. So there's some they're not in the bill, but there are some side issues for us to hear testimony about. And we weren't online, but there is an aviation day coming up and there is some other work we'll do with the Commerce and Economic Development Committee. Barring any other questions? I already also mentioned the 22A study that would be the Economic Development Bill that we'll be taking a look at at some point.