Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Good morning. Good morning. We are here in Ways and Means. It is March 19. We are on second to last day of crossover, and we are looking at this year's transportation. An act related to fiscal year 2027 transportation program miscellaneous changes to laws relating to transportation. And what we're going to do this morning, with all due respect to the Transportation Committee, we're likely going to need to amend the bill. And so what my plan is, is that we walk through the whole thing with Damian, walk through the fiscal with Logan, hear from Patrick and Michelle from AOT, and then sort of go back in again with Damian for changes. Does that sound good? So first round to understand, second round to whatever the next round is called. Okay. Great. And then we are working on H2 eleven after that at eleven. Damien. Oh, and sorry. Second public service announcement. What we might need to do since Damien would actually need time to write things is that we might say goodbye to Damian and then come back to vote during announcements that month. Today. He's Today. If we still think today. Well, if we want it to make it to the Senate, we need to get it to the Appropriations Committee today in time to get referred when we're on the floor today. And so they need this for their budget. Damian, floor is now yours.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: For the record, I'm Damian Leonard from the Office of Legislative Council. Do you folks like the bill up on the screen?

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: We do. Thank you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So I'll take you through the bill quickly. I will pause on sections that relate to revenues and go a little more slowly, but feel free to stop me with questions.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: May I also speak? Yes.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So section one adopts the 2027 transportation program. This is boilerplate language that we put in every transportation bill. So it adopts the bill. It adds definitions that are used throughout the act. Beyond that, there's there's not much to talk about there. The transportation program, the financial notes are something that Logan can get into more deeply. Section two is a technical correction. So the former municipal heavy equipment loan program became the municipal equipment and vehicle loan program several years back, which has been administered by the treasurer's office for a number of years. Last year, there were changes put into the budget, which were intended to repeal these outdated rules by law. They didn't accomplish that. So, we're accomplishing that with this language. Section three relates to standards for the design of roadways. This is, again, more of a technical amendment. It reflects that we do already have state standards for the design of roadways. And then the changes at the bottom reflect that as a state, we've adopted the federal manual on uniform traffic control devices or MUTSID, which requires specific warning signs, signals, and markings for these roads. To be clear, these what it's talking about here are when you're on a main road and it's got a speed limit of 45 miles an hour and then you get to a tight curve and you have to slow down to 25, that's what this is addressing. So it's just saying you don't need to go through a special exception process in order to put warning signs up that it's a slower curve on an otherwise faster road.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Doesn't mean you could say it's 15 miles an hour on the system. What's that? Doesn't mean you can say it's 15 miles an hour.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. It's this applies to state highways where the speed limits are set by the traffic committee. There are specific limits around that. This is just saying as long as you follow that federal manual for how you warn lower speed areas where there's a safety concern, so you need to slow traffic down, then you can do it through that process. Yeah. It doesn't get to setting overall road speed limits. That's a different thing entirely. Section four, this relates to bonding requirements for the agency of transportation. You're gonna see repetitive language here. The first group are bonds that are related to the execution of the contract terms. And so it allows the secretary of transportation to waive the bonding requirement for contracts below $250,000. Currently, it's below a $100,000, but that doesn't cover much roadwork these days. And then second, during an emergency event, it allows the secretary to waive bonding requirements for emergency stabilization work. The permanent work would still go through the normal bonding process. The second group of changes does the exact same thing, but these are bonds related to payment of wages, creditors, taxes, and unemployment insurance. So same allowance on waivers, just a different type of bond. Section five brings us into compliance with the national bridge inspection standards. So essentially, there are two types of bridges, town maintained bridges and state maintained bridges. The agency inspects both. For town maintained bridges, they can advise the town of conditions, advise the town to post or close the bridge. And when I say post, it means max weight 4,000 pounds. For state maintained, it all goes to the state, and it just sets out whose responsibilities lie where. For section six I'm sorry. It also includes a new penalty of $5.00 for violating those requirements. Section six makes that violation a traffic violation for purposes of title 23 and includes other technical changes. Section seven changes the membership of the public transit advisory council. The community of Vermont elders dissolved, so they're replaced with AARP Vermont. And the private bus operators are consolidated to one member, and the taxi services since that spot has not been filled in years are being taken off of the council. For Green Mountain Transit in section eight, this allows Green Mountain Transit to propose a budget that includes voluntary local contributions, grants, donations, and other non assessment revenues and provides that that won't affect members. So, allows them to build their budget with non assessment revenues and to seek those revenues. Section nine extends public private partnership authority for the agency of transportation for another three years. There's apparently another project that they're considering undertaking and this would give them the authority to pursue that. Section 10 limits the appeals for what are called section eleven eleven permits. These are permits for driveways, signs that are in the road right of way, drainage that's in the road right of way, etcetera, to just the applicant or committee. What the agency has seen in recent years is that this is becoming another battleground for a zoning dispute. And so if the zoning dispute isn't going well, you'll appeal this eleven eleven permit. They wanna focus it on the actual issue at stake, the driveway or the sign rather than the ongoing zoning dispute. Section 11 is the transportation alternatives grant program. This does a couple of things. It increases the maximum grant amount to 600,000 on an ongoing basis. And currently, there's a set aside of 50% for stormwater and other environmental environmental mitigation projects like salt sheds. This takes away the set aside but continues to allow the money to be used for those purposes. And then in section 12, on a one year basis, order to get some of the federal monies out the door, they're increasing the maximum grant amount to $1,200,000. Section 13 requires ongoing work on studies from the 2025 T bill that the committee was wanted to see more more done around that work and also getting to representative Kimbell's question earlier asks for a look at statutes related to setting speed limits and trying to simplify and clarify those. There are currently six different ways that you can set a speed limit in a municipality depending on your situation. And then this directs recommendations for legislative action next January. Section 14 and I'm going to slow down here cause this relates to revenues. This is the pilot special fund. This would allow pilot special fund monies to be revenues above a certain point to be directed to the state general state highway state aid for town highways program. And what it provides is that if the local option tax revenues in a given fiscal year exceed the full amount of the pilot payments, the grand list stabilization payments, the payments to correctional facilities that are made under the pilot program, and then amounts appropriated to the Department of Taxes for expenses related to grand list and appraisal assistance. So, okay, if we've exceeded all of that, one half of the excess would be dedicated to the state aid general state aid for town highways program. That is a mouthful. But that's that's what this does is it takes one half of that excess in any year that there's an excess and dedicates it to the town highway aid in the next fiscal year.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Opposed. Yes. To read the language, full amount of all payments made under subject form four c

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of the straddle pending appropriated by the. If we were to this language gets signed into law. Next year, we decide we're going to use the pilot fund to pay for x thing that gets added to sub chapter four and four c, and so it would

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: be part of that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: So in other words, if you're

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: another If you change the statute, if you were doing one time funds, no. So it depends on how you structure it. And then there's also, as happens with this language periodically or language like this in statute, it gets not withstood in a year where you decide to use the funds for a completely different purpose.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And so I I just wanna say, I appreciate sort of the artistry of the waterfall that was created here. And that you naming that often we not withstand. It's one of our favorite things to not withstand is a waterfall. And the amount going into the pilot fund right now is deeply in flux. We do not know what's going to happen with the Stowe Charter change. And if the Stowe Charter change goes, a lot of other Charter changes might be coming. And so I think we need more clarity on how much we're actually talking about in a waterfall before we allow a waterfall to go through. So I'll just name that for now. We'll do amendments after we've heard from everyone, but just wanna put that in.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: The Stowe Charter change is the request to increase their local options tax withholding to 2%. Just to the

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: point being, understanding that it's in flux and we're unsure of the actual numbers, it's gonna go

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: up. What?

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Is it the amount The that we received.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, it's in flux, but it's not in positive trajectory.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yes, just we don't know how much we're talking about, and if it is enough to add all of these extra mechanics and funds. Yes, everything ready. Well, when I first heard about this change, the understanding was this would be for the communities in which the local option tax object was located. You know, for whatever we were able to collect a local option tax on, that would go back to benefit that singular town, but that's not correct.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. That that is not how those

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think that was another idea that was floating through the Yeah. Okay. There

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: there have been a number of different local option tax proposals this year. One of them involved, directing money back to the community in which it was enacted, similar to the current local option taxes. This particular one doesn't change the current local option tax structure. Simply says we're gonna take any excess revenues k. And half of those would be scooped and sent over to the transportation fund for this other purpose, and it would be distributed to all towns based on a formula.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And we can we'll hear more from Logan about, like, what that actually might look like. So thank you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section 15 essentially just sets up the language to receive those funds from the pilot special funds and ensures that depending on fluctuations in the local option tax, it won't affect the base appropriation for general state aid for town highways, which is tied to an inflator. So it can't go down, but can go up as costs go up. And so that way, if you had a recession and local option tax dropped, it wouldn't suddenly throw the cause force the transportation fund to draw from other places to fill that amount. So, it allows the local option tax revenues to fluctuate But, again, you can discuss more with Logan, but this this basically just separates out two different streams that go into the overall appropriation for town highway grants. K. The next section is an appropriation to continue work with Drive Electric Vermont. It's set at a $192,000 in this proposal. After that, in section 17, there's an extension or I'm sorry, a change in the language around the authorization to sell the Caledonia County State Airport. It removes language requiring the agency to ensure that the airport continues to be identified as a public use airport in the national integrated airport system because there were questions that came up from the FAA about how they could guarantee that. And so rather than causing a hang up there in the sale, which they they do have a potential buyer and they're working through that, this has been taken out. And then in section nine, the sunset on that authority is extended from this May to 11/01/2027 to allow them to finish up that process. And that brings us to the mileage based user fee, where I'll go more slowly again. So this would establish a new user fee that's assessed on the miles traveled by a battery electric vehicle. So this is a pure electric vehicle, not a plug in hybrid, not a mild hybrid. The first section in the new chapter just sets out the purpose is to ensure that electric vehicles contribute to the transportation fund in amount that reflects the miles traveled. The definitions here, I'm going to skip over because they're fairly self explanatory with the exception of the mileage reporting period, which is either the time between annual inspections or the time between the most recent annual inspection and the terminating event. Terminating event can be the sale or end of a lease, can be moving to another state and registering the electric vehicle there. It can also be other instances like a vehicle reaching the end of its life, a vehicle being totaled in an accident, other instances where you cancel your registration. So

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: How

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: do you describe a vehicle reaching the end of its life?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: What if it's taken off the highway?

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Okay. So Salvage yards.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Salvage yard. It could also include the the vehicle just having its highway registration canceled. It's no longer gonna be used on the highway. Thank you. Yeah. So and in some instances, it could be a temporary termination of registration and then later renewed. So the So there are three ways that the annual mileage based user fee can be assessed. The first and most basic way is that you get to the end of your mileage reporting period. Your miles traveled are assessed. And the essentially, there's a reading at the start of the period from your inspection where your abdominal, let's say, it says 20,000 miles. The end at the next inspection, it says 30,000 miles. That gets reported to DMV. DMV then multiplies the per mile rate by the number of miles and you get a bill. You can get that bill by snail mail, email, or electronically through the MyDMV website. And so that's all covered in here. So within fourteen days, they have to calculate the amount. Soon as practicable after that, they have to mail the amount to you, which includes the email or other electronic distribution. And then you have forty five days to either pay the lump sum due or go into a monthly or quarterly payment plan. So it allows you to sort of limit that that bit. There is also an option

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Sorry. Before you go to the other option. Am I remembering right from previous testimony that the payment options on the DMV website charge you for credit cards?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a good question for the DMV. Thanks. The pay as you go option. So this is something that AOT can speak to a little bit more. My understanding is that they've requested in the RFP that this be offered as an option by the third party administrator. This allows the commissioner in the commissioner's discretion to establish the pay as you go program. And, essentially, the way that would work is that periodically you would report your mileage to the DMV, and when you report it, you would make payments as you report it. So you could make reports throughout the year instead of waiting till the end of the year to get a bill and then figuring out how to pay it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And is the commissioner required to come back to us once that program is developed, or is it just rolled out if the commissioner does

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: not? There is no requirement for the commissioner to come back to you before it's rolled out.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I was hoping this would become clear, and it hasn't yet

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: to me. Is there a reason why hybrids that are plugged into hybrids are exempted? The

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: initial directive in the priority bills was to start with electric vehicles. There is ongoing discussion about whether and, if so, when to move this program expand this program to other vehicles like plug in hybrids and internal combustion vehicles. But at this point, the only vehicles that are committed to are electric vehicles. For this program, plug in hybrids currently pay an infrastructure fee each year in addition to whatever gas taxes they pay at the pump. So they pay $44.50 per year as an infrastructure fee.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Is that they go to store?

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: What the 80s had sort of a stand in temporary

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They an $89 fee and the hybrids are half that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: It's a bit on the restrictions.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: So I live on the New York State border. Mhmm. There's a certain creamiest day that opened last happens to be in Lake George, New York. I don't know where I'd come for that. My life's just out of state.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This does not account for the difference between in state and out of state mileage. It charges you on your overall odometer reading. The in the same way that you could buy gas in Vermont and then travel across the line and the tax goes to Vermont. So it's not a perfect system. It doesn't account just for miles in the state. There are other states that are looking at geofencing technology, but it is expensive and has privacy concerns that it raises. So at this point, the agency can speak more to this, but they're not proposing that at this point.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Of course.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Again, with that, you pay as you go, and then at the end of the mileage reporting period, your next inspection, there's a true up. So if you've overreported your mileage, for example, if there's if the photo wasn't clear and the mileage got read wrong at DMV, you would get a credit for overpayments. If you've underreported, which is more likely because you'll probably have traveled miles since your last report, you get a bill for whatever the balance of the miles are at the end of the pay as you go period.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Since this program hasn't been developed yet, I'm confused about why there's so much language about the program that's Yeah,

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we drafted the language based on what was explained to me. Yeah. I drafted the language based on what was explained to me. You can speak to the agency a little bit more later about about this, but my effort here was to reflect what had been explained about the intended program.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Any part of it modeled after other states who have implemented the same thing in terms of the actual language? No.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I did not model the language on other states. There is a limited amount of language out there in other states, and it it varies greatly from directing just a few sentences, directing an agency to come up with rules and procedures to more in-depth programs. And and right now, it's it's Oregon, Virginia, Utah, and Hawaii that have pilot programs going, and they're all slightly different. I might have missed one, but everybody's slightly different, and it's just a fairly new system. So there there wasn't a lot to model on here. Mileage based user fee for newly registered vehicles. So this is a little bit different. Essentially, when you first register your EV, you'll pay an estimated mileage based user fee. The current estimate is directed at the average annual miles traveled by a pleasure car in Vermont multiplied by the mileage fee. So that's roughly 11,000 miles and works out to about a $154 a year. Then at the end of your first mileage reporting period, you would then true up and either get a credit for overpayment that would be applied to future payments or pay the additional balance due. And you can pay that 154 the same way as you can the lump sum or in monthly or quarterly payments. So it allows folks when they're newly registering an electric vehicle in the state to elect to space their payments out or just pay everything all at once. That's that language. So the mileage based user fee is calculated, as I've said, by multiplying the number of miles traveled by the rate. The diff the mileage is calculated as the mileage at the start of the period or the mileage at the end of the period minus the mileage at the start of the period. So pretty straightforward. And then with the pay as you go plan, it's it's the mileage at the current report subtract subtracting the mileage from your previous report. The rate is set at zero point zero 1.4¢ per mile traveled during the mileage reporting period. It's set in statute. There was originally an inflator proposed. It was taken out next door in the transportation committee. So this would have to be adjusted by you all in future legislative sessions if you wanted to increase it or decrease it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: My understanding of the conversation in the transportation committee is that there's no inflator on the gas tax. Why should there be an inflator on the fee that's designed to parallel the gas tax? Just telling you the context I have on that.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. The there's one exemption right now from the fee, and that is US government vehicles. Whether they have federal plates or state plates, they're exempted. I did have a question about who pays registration fees in the state. The state does not pay registration fees for its vehicles. Municipalities pay a reduced registration fee for some vehicles. And the EV infrastructure fee is waived for state and certain municipal vehicles. So

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And probably we would wanna parallel that. I think the less we can move money from one random state one department and state government to the other department and state government. It's just that Yeah.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That said, because the gas tax is paid at the distributor level, all of the gas in the state includes that amount. The the mileage based user fee is in addition to any other fees and taxes imposed by the title, and this is just so that there isn't a claim that your registration fee and mileage user fee are duplicative or something like that. There is an ability to appeal the amount of the assessed mileage based user fee within fifteen days to the commissioner. And then later on yeah. So you have fifteen days after you get the assessment to file an appeal. And then the commissioner has authority to have hear appeals pursuant to other language that's already entitled 23 that allows.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: After you receive it or 15 after it's mailed?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: After the I would say the assessment is mailed, but, yeah, that's not in there.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It's 45 to pay after it's mailed?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Yep.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: That seems hugely problematic given the state of mail

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: delivery in my ears.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Again stop me in the desk between my driveway for me.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Sometimes, they don't make it until six months later.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Again, the words the word mail includes email and other electronic delivery. So, yeah, that was in title 23, anytime you hear mail, it also includes electronic mail. But it for someone who doesn't have email, you should have delivery issues. And and then there is an ability to get a refund if you've had a terminating event and you've overpaid rather than getting a credit against a future mileage based fee that you won't pay, you can get a refund.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: That's the drama of the terminating event. It just makes the whole world so much more exciting. I got it there.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I like to add drama where I can. Yeah. So two required reports. Inspection mechanics have to report the mileage when they do an inspection. And the owner, a lessee of the vehicle upon occurrence of a terminating event after report the odometer's leaving. Currently, when you sell or end the lease, there's an odometer disclosure anyway. Or things like an accident or a vehicle that's being taken to the salvage yard, there will have to be another process. But the commissioner can set that up.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And I imagine there's already a process in place for mechanics to report mileage at inspection.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So they're under the current computer. Yeah. Under the current electronic inspection system, this can be part of the report that goes back to the department as part of that. So and the agency can speak more to how that looks.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If you fail to pay your fee when it's due, interest accrues at one and a half percent per month. It is capped at a total of 18%, which equals one year of interest. So that if you, for example, didn't pay your fee, just don't go on accruing interest into the future.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And 18% represents?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Twelve months at one and a half percent. Yep. The commissioner may waive some or all of the interest and penalties. That should just say interest, actually, if the commissioner determines that it was due to excusable neglect. Just Will

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: you remember to take out that penalty or should

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I Yes. I'm going to make a note to myself.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: How does the commissioner determine?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Excusable. Yeah. Excusable neglect is that is essentially, it's a judgment call by the commissioner as to whether the and this is something that we've used in things like failure to pay unemployment insurance, things like that. Was there an event that occurred which is excusable rather than sort of intentional neglect of your responsibilities? Was it due to, for example, mail being misdelivered and oversight, failure of a you know, bank payment to go through correctly, something like that versus intentional. Just I'm not gonna

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: pay that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Same process for someone to request that as the other appeal? Is it all the same appeal?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a good point. There is not a laid out administrative process. No. There there it's a good question. I'm sorry. It's not there isn't an administrative process laid out. So that could be added. No. The currently, the only general opinion authority, and this is an appeal to superior court. And, otherwise, you have the administrative appeal of the actual amount of the assessment. But, yeah, the the interest is not appealable, but there's language we can have which would allow an individual to request a waiver. K. And you would probably wanna allow that to occur at any well, I shouldn't tell you what you would want. You could have that be within a certain period of time or just at any time given that the interest continues accruing, and an individual may not be aware of the interest occurring, especially if there is an instance where, for example, they've set up their spam filter in a way that catches the department's emails.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Sure. Thank you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Great. Okay. The failure to file a report so if you've intentionally not filed a report within a reasonable period of time after the report or inspection is due, reasonable period of time is up to the commissioner currently for things like paying your registration fees or licensing fees. If you bounce a check, they give thirty days for you to make good on the amount due before they suspend your license. This allows them to set up some reasonable time like that. You would be assessed at the ninety eighth percentile of the miles traveled by electric vehicles, which is estimated to work out to about $375 for your fee.

[Rep. William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: What is that suspension?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This The suspension, which we'll get to in a moment, is until you pay the amount due. Yeah. So to reinstate your license, if you've bounced a check, you need to pay the license fee. To reinstate your registration, if you've bounced a check for your registration, you need to pay the registration fee and infrastructure fee, or if that's due. In this case, this is also going to require that you are currently up to date on any infrastructure fee or MBUF fees, mileage based user fee payments that are due when you go to renew your registration. If you're not up to date, you can come up to date and then renew.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do you know where the ninety eighth percentile has been?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That was proposed by the agency that can speak to that point.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just to understand the math, take the ninety eighth percentile, which is across all electric vehicles that have gone through the process of keeping up with their filings, right, and then multiplying that mileage times the rate of point o one four, whatever it was, cents per mile, and that comes up when you said 300?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe the estimate is $375 roughly. For a regular annual fee. Well, yeah. And that's if you don't. If you fail to either file your terminating event mileage report or if you fail to have your car inspected within a reasonable time after the inspection is due. So this is encouragement to get your car inspected on time. Might be one way to characterize it anyway. It's yeah. And then I mentioned the suspension or refusal to renew the registration. So and this does require notice and an opportunity for a hearing because suspended driving with suspended registration opens you up to all sorts of other additional offenses if you get pulled over and your registration is suspended. So the commissioner does have to give you notice that they intend to suspend your registration because you're not current and give you an opportunity for a hearing on that to contest the suspension.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And is that process set up?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is set up. There's currently statutes in section one zero five to one zero seven of title 23 set up a whole process. Yeah. It also covers instances where you've intentionally misrepresented or misstated something. So this is, you know, essentially trying to file a fraudulent mileage report or something like that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Does the fraudulent mile report include the hypothetical pay as you go or just the one from the mechanics?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This would include pay as you go if those reports are required to be filed at a certain time. It'd be it's not clear whether there would be specific required reports or whether it would be

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: more flexible. It's like a big open question. Okay. Thank you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. This could include intentionally misstating your mileage and pay as you go report. Section forty three zero eight provides general authority for the commissioner to administer and enforce provisions of the chapter. It then sets out additional powers which were originally taken from the gas and diesel fuel provisions. Some of them are boilerplates. Some of them, grant somewhat broader authority. So adopting rules is pretty common as necessary to administer and enforce. Prescribing forms, contracting with the account manager to administer and manager the mileage based user fee, all of these are mays.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Interrupt for a second. So it's sort of boilerplate parallel to a system that that levies a fee at a distributor level, not at a user level. Yes. And so there might be places we wanna look to make sure that these two ideas are not in conflict. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yep.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This was trimmed slightly in the in the transportation committee. I can't remember the exact section, but there was one that they already determined was authority that wasn't necessary for a fee on a user rather than a tax on a large distributor. Then the number four here is one of those that is a broader and less boilerplate authority. This would provide with the approval of the governor and the secretary of transportation, allowing them to enter into agreements with other states, the district of Columbia, and Canadian provinces, providing for reciprocal enforcement of mileage based use of the tax laws imposed by the jurisdictions entering into such an agreement.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do those places have mileage based user fee?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Like I said, only four states that I'm aware of currently have a mileage based user fee. So it is under consideration in other places, but and then this would also allow enforcement of the overdue amounts from those places in our state by a duly authorized officer of a contracting jurisdiction that extends reciprocal authority to this state. So this is, again, taken from the gas and diesel tax.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Do you know if any other state has a full or left for all electric vehicles yet? Mandatory?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I believe Hawaii is transitioning to that, but hasn't done so yet. I'm seeing Logan shaking his head now. So I'm trusting trusting that Logan knows more about that than I do.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Seems really for enforcement.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Trying to figure out what that looks like.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Can you describe how it looks for fuel dealers?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So for fuel dealers, essentially what this does is if you've got a reciprocal agreement, it allows them if they have a dealer that operates in both states and hasn't paid their taxes in in the other state, that state can sue in Vermont courts to collect those taxes. And then vice versa, Vermont can sue in that state's courts to collect Vermont taxes that are due. So that's what this allows is for enforcement in the other state's courts and enforcement of their laws under Vermont state law.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Just mean RM gets registered in different states?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, so this would allow for reciprocal enforcement if someone moves states to collect amounts due.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Someone might try to avoid paying the tax by registering that car in New Hampshire?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, if they have a mileage user fee and they enter into a reciprocal agreement, this would allow you to pursue them there. One of the things that you may want to consider is we're talking about very different amounts potentially. And so one of the things that came out next door was language from the gas and diesel tax related to lawsuits to collect amounts due, tax liens, and use of collection agencies to collect amounts due. Because we're talking about even, let's say, 154, which is the estimated average plus 18% interest, you're still only talking about a $180.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Right. Right.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that doesn't even cover filing your claim in court. So there is potentially some question about the utility of this, particularly prior to widespread adoption.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Oh, sorry. Heard someone else.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: In answer to non representative Kimbell's inquiry about New Hampshire sets the property tax on motor vehicles every year. So if you have a high expensive car and you register in New Hampshire, you're paying a property tax on that every year. That's substantial. A lot of money. Hundreds of dollars.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Fun. And

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: New Hampshire, they do wild stuff.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: They do. They have other ways of getting their

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: They really do. There are a lot of fees impacting over there in New Hampshire despite their best advertising efforts.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the next couple here, it's worth noting that this largely duplicates general authority that's already given under the '23 VSA one zero five to one zero seven, allows the commissioner to hold hearings, cause depositions to be taken. And this is essentially, again, in the gas taxes, this is related to when you're appealing the amount of your fuel assessment there. And then to compel attendance witnesses, so essentially to subpoena witnesses and documents, and then to conduct examinations under oath. So take testimony under oath, and then to use the court system to compel to basically execute the subpoenas. So this is

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Like, my mechanic gets subpoenaed because I didn't pay my

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: user fee bill?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Depends on whether they're material to your appeal of your user fee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So, like, my the guy who changes my tires who might have a very good sense of how much I drive because of the abuse on the tires could get.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If there are records so one of the things here too is that largely the records will be with DMV already. You're talking about an odometer reading. You're not talking about invoices for fuel delivered to a 100 different gas stations across the region.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: If this section went away, would there still be, like, an underlying universe of how the court works that would guide these things?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That is all provided under That's

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: so funny. I just like

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the framing under the universe in which the court works. I'm amused by

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: your charming kind of phrase.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm resisting the urge to play along here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: So already Thank you. Already, one o You're not sharing anymore. Right?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. I do. I'm just pulling up some statutes here. Already, title 23 section one zero five provides in the administration of laws relating to motor vehicles and to the operators in operation. The commissioner may conduct hearings, subpoena witnesses, administer oaths, and take testimony. Commissioner may also cause depositions to be taken and order the production of books, papers, and records relating to any matter under investigation. It's all already there. So you could take that away, and this is all covered already under one zero five through one zero seven. One zero six sets forward procedures on hearings. One zero seven requires minimum notice before a hearing is held.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Just curious. At the top of the section,

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: why you require approval from both the governor and the secretary since the secretary works for the governor?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That that language was copied from the gas and diesel tax. So but I don't know what the original intent was there, but that was taken directly from that and lifted with the words mileage based user fee added to the the

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: language. And, like, can you say why the committee felt like they had to repeat this language in terms of production?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So when we were doing the initial draft of this, this language was recommended in the initial draft from the agency's council, and I kept it in. And then it just wasn't taken out next door. We didn't have a chance to discuss one zero five to one zero seven closely, and it doesn't the language is largely repetitive, so it doesn't change or limit anything. And it's generally boilerplate. And it yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's section forty three zero nine allows an appeal.

[Rep. James Masland (Member)]: Do you

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I'm sorry. I gotta pull it back up. And technical difficulties mostly related to sleepiness. So the notice of appeal here allows any individual to appeal. Again, this is duplicative of of language that already exists in, I believe, earlier, but yeah. And person agreed by a decision would have the right to appeal. The difference in the language here is that it's any final decision of the commissioner. The language in one zero five is any decision on a hearing. So you may wanna keep this here, and then this is the exclusive revenue available to an individual. This, again, was taken directly from the gas and diesel taxes.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yeah. Section

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: 20 updates the infrastructure fees. Last year, we already added the repeal of the EV infrastructure fee upon the effective date of the mileage based user fee. This changes the name from EV infrastructure fee to just infrastructure fees since it won't apply to EVs anymore. And it also removes the allocation of those amounts. It would now have them just generally go into the transportation fund for use for transportation purposes rather than being designated for the ACCD's program to increase level one and level two chargers at multifamily residences and workplaces. Section 21 sets out a transition for

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm worried I'm gonna forget to ask you how that program and or fund is gonna do. So if you can just remember that I asked you that. Thanks. I'm also tired. Back to you, Damian. Sorry. Yep.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No problem. So section 21 sets out the transition for the mileage based user fee. This omits one thing that came to our attention overnight as we've continued going back and forth between Logan Logan, Chris, I, and and the agency have continued going back and forth on details of the bill. What this covers is for electric vehicles that are registered in the state prior to the start of the mileage based user fee program. Your initial mileage reporting period would start with your first annual inspection. This covers the vehicles whose initial mileage reporting period occurs before they renew their inspection. They would get a credit for the $89 infrastructure fee that they've already paid in that registration year towards the amount of their initial fee. It what I omitted here is what happens for vehicles whose registration renews before they start their initial mileage reporting period. And the proposal from the agency there is like a newly registered vehicle. They pay an estimated amount upfront and then true up at the end of the mileage reporting period. So it's not in here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I don't so I think I'm confused about how this works then. So when I think of the beginning of the reporting period, I think that if I get an inspection after January 1, I don't pay anything at the point of that inspection. It's my next inspection that I pay for the first time.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that is how the agency is proposing it would work if you've if your inspection is before you renew your registration. If it's after, they're proposing that you would pay an estimated amount upfront and then true up at the end.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Other than having a 12 14.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. And that, you know, that is a policy choice for all of you. This reflects a lot of the agency's proposals. And one of them is that for new vehicles and for vehicles who start who renew their registration before their mileage reporting period starts so they wouldn't have paid an infrastructure fee at that point, But in both of those instances, they pay an estimated fee upfront for the miles they will be driving during

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: that year.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I would imagine that reconciliation and needing to pay users back, as well as people estimating something in a program that has never existed before, could get really complicated, but we'll talk to the agency about that.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I know you can't create laws around what might potentially happen, but again, when it talks about your annual inspection, we're possibly looking at every other year inspections, was there any consideration as to how that might work going forward?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not in this bill. The Senate bill s two eleven that proposes looking at the possibility of shifting to an every other year inspection directs that one of the things they propose in their plan to transition to that is how to address the mileage based user fee as part of that. Okay. And so that that bill is going to be coming over to the house, and Edward would direct the agency and the Department of Motor Vehicles to come up with a plan to transition us to a two year cycle. And there are a number of things. Mileage based user fee is one of them. There's also things like Clean Air Act compliance and so forth that we have to address so that we don't end up with hiccups like our neighbors in New Hampshire have had as they have shifted to no inspections. And

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: that was actually gonna go into effect at the January 2028.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It was, and it's been there's now an injunction that is keeping the inspections going while the lawsuit under federal law works its way out. Wow. Yeah. So they repealed inspections. People stopped getting their cars inspected. Two days before the repeal took effect, the federal court required them to continue inspecting cars.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: But other states don't do every there are other states that don't do every year.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Clean Air Act is funky because it depends on where you are in the country. Your requirements are different. We have the luck, whether it's good or bad, of being in what's called the ozone transport region, which requires us to have enhanced emissions inspections and maintenance requirements for our vehicles. There are some states that have a two year emissions inspection, but we would have to change certain things about the requirements potentially to be able to get that sort of plan approved. That's An ozone transport region? Ozone transport region is what it's called. Essentially, we don't generate the pollution that's contributing to the bad air quality. But because of the way the winds blow, it comes over our region, and so we're held to a higher standard under the Clean Air Act.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: At the end of the day, I think, this year?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Cool. So the last mileage based user fee or MBOC provision here is that it would designate that all revenues generated in fiscal year twenty twenty seven would be allocated to general state aid for town highways in fiscal year twenty twenty eight. And so there's there is not a good estimate of what the revenues will be between January and June of next year. A lot of that's going to depend on how you structure the program and how many newly registered vehicles and vehicles that have any upfront fee.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: And it does say net revenues.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So that's after I wrote net revenues understanding that there may be some costs related to the program. So it's it's as net revenues. Could be changed to revenues. And the effective date for all of those sections is January 1, and I'm done.

[Rep. Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Bridget Burkhardt. Thank you. I was in the transportation committee chatting in someone, I don't remember which member it was, and they said that the average amount that a person drives car, they sign like $134 in gas tax a year. I wonder if we could just make life easier. After, you know, you're already paid, but just being paid by everything.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think that's what the current law essentially does with the electric infrastructure fee, but that's, we can ask the issue about that when they

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: come up. The current law, it is the the amount that they came up with was designed to match up to the average that an internal combustion engine vehicle would pay in gas tax, and that was what we directed in prior transportation bills. The $89 infrastructure fee was picked because it equals your registration fee. So you're just paying an additional registration fee each year as an EV owner. And that was an approximation when they didn't have an estimate of that amount. So that amount is actually low, although it does pay something. The design of this is it's designed to be a user pays model, so you pay for use. Originally, the gas tax, when it was enacted, was more of a user pays model because there wasn't a lot of variation in mileage between different cars at that point. Now, as we all know, you can have cars and trucks that get very low mileage, and you can have cars and trucks that get very, very good mileage depending on the design, capabilities, and all sorts of other things. So right now, the gas tax is it can be wildly different depending on whether you're driving a newer vehicle with a very efficient engine or an older vehicle or a vehicle with a larger, more powerful, but less efficient engine, something like that.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Just wonder how many FTEs it's going to cost us. That's a great question for the agency when they come up because we should definitely ask that. Thank you, Damian.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you for your time. Like a swirl I just hive trees all over the same house.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Morning for the record Logan Mooberry with the Joint Fiscal Office. I offer you a draft version of my fiscal note.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I've never seen that little box and I love it.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Disabled quote, yes. Something will be there eventually. I didn't have time to get to it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: You read these. This is my green one.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: This is essentially what the note will be. I will tidy it up and clean it up at the end of the day.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Hope that you're willing to share a draft.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Thank you. So, I wanted to have something to present to you all that sort of walked through some of the fiscal impacts of the bill. So, Damian walked through most of these, so I'll just sort of highlight them again. And then there'll a couple that I think you'll probably wanna get into in more detail. The first thing, section 11, this is more a change to sort of appropriation. So, this is where they're increasing the amount of money that can be given out through this transportation alternative grant program. They're increasing it to $600,000 from $300,000 And then they're removing this section that had some limitations stating that 50% of the grant program funds had to be given to environmental mitigation projects related to storm water and highways. So, they're sort of increasing it and then allowing them money not to be sort of cordoned off fiftyfifty, but to go to other places. Section 12 related to the same program, they're just allowing for that in fiscal year twenty seven, that program can give out grant awards up to 1,200,000 That authority would then revert back to the 600,000 that we just mentioned in FY '28. But there was a desire to get out the funds that they currently have in the program and the agency spoke about how there was sort of an inability to spend all the money that we currently had. So, by giving them the one year authority to spend this additional money, they could get it out for more projects.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So what they did is they increased the amount of money that could be given per project, but not the number of projects?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Correct, they didn't specify the amount of projects that are going out, but they just increased the amount that can go out per project. And this doesn't change the amount of money that was appropriated to this program, just how much can be given out per grant.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And what was the logic for Reverting in one year? Is there a specific project that's before them that they want to fund?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's a great question, maybe for the agency. I'm not totally sure if there was a specific project that drove this or just My understanding is there were funds in this program that they wanted to get out quicker than they had previously been getting them out. So, by giving them the one year to send out more money per grant, it allowed them to move this money quicker. But I think the agency could probably speak towards the specifics of the program and the grants that you want to get involved

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: This is way more in appropriations zone than our zone, but they can answer the question when they come up.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I just think that's very unusual, and usually the response to not being able to get your money out is to evaluate whether that money is needed.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Great. Section 14, the pilot special fund. This is the language that Damian walked through that would essentially say that 50% of all sort of the remaining revenue from the local often tax is generated in one year after paying those things that Damian mentioned, 50% of that would go to the transportation fund, which would be used and appropriated for general state aid to town highways in the next preceding fiscal year. I'll just preface with saying I'm not an expert on the pilot fund, if you want to get into that. There are people that joined fiscal who know far more than I do. We heard testimony that based on estimates of FY '27 and what's being appropriated, this could be slightly less than $200,000 to the transportation fund this year. It could be less than that and unknown in future years.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: What happens when $200,000 gets distributed to town highway funds? What does that look like on a per town basis?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Per town, very small. I believe a rough estimate, you For every $1,000,000 of additional town highway aid money, each town gets $3,700 or something like that. It's dependent on the miles of roads, of each class of road that you have in your state. There's a sort of complex So it'd

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: be three seventy dollars ish? No, dollars 700 ish.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So no, the math will pop my head, but yeah, I'll take your word for it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Yeah, sorry, Marissa, don't Understanding

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Probably head to our next question. Here's how you got to that a little under $200,000 number. There's quite

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: a sizable surplus on the pilot. So, it's not based on the amount currently in the fund. It's based on the excess local option tax revenue for that year after you pay all the things listed in statute, any money that's left from that year's revenue would be Yes. Split in I understand it. Here's a table. Ted presented a table on the pilot fund, and I'm sure he'd be happy to if he hadn't already here.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think next week we need to spend real time on the pilot fund, and lots of time with Ted who has been really just catching up with estimates since Representative meeting Ode. I think that anything that doesn't go to pilot, the excess don't go to pilot, property taxes. I don't understand that, but we can talk about it. I'm kind. Okay.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I don't understand it either.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm gonna have Logan finish and then maybe you can explain.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Section 15 is related to this and would just state that any money that came from the pilot fund per the previous section would be in addition to existing statutory funding requirements for this program. So, it's not supplanting what is currently being spent, but would be in addition to it. That's what this language says. Section 16, this is a one time appropriation to Beijing Transportation to be used to continue their partnership with Drive Electric Vermont. So this would just, I think, of this funding, sort of, we would run out of the money that we were using within this work that Drive Electric Vermont was doing, and so this would allow that work to continue. The section 19, the the mileage based user fee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm sorry. I stopped paying attention for one second. Can you go back to drive a lecture?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'd like.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: One time appropriation.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And there's no ongoing money going into that anymore because the infrastructure fee is going away?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So Drive Electric Vermont is separate from the infrastructure fee.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I'll

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: answer the question that you mentioned in a couple of sections. Two separate things, though.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: But I get to not pay attention for a second. Sorry. Section 19 as you were.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So my other issues would be, as Damien just went through, the first block of text there is really just sort of explaining a little bit of how it works, but we'll jump into the money portion. So, try to think the best way to start this. So, the estimated amount of miles driven per year for BEVs is roughly 11,000 miles per year. And we know from the statute that the current MBUF assessment rate is at 1.4¢. So if you sort of do that math out, the average MBUF assessment across the state would be roughly $154 per year. Now, figuring out how much revenue this is gonna bring in gets a little complicated because as you heard, there's sort of a transition period where people are shifting from this $89 EV infrastructure fee, which I'll get into in just a second. There's also the fact that this fee is sort of starting January 1, which would be in the middle of a fiscal year. And then, fee has the option to People have the option to pay it over different frequencies if they choose. So, some people could pay it all upfront, at which case we get the payment at once. You could pay it quarterly, so you'd get $154 on average broken out four times throughout a calendar year or monthly. So $154 paid $13 every month. So being able to say this amount of revenue will come into the state in the first six months is very hard because we don't know what payment frequencies people are going to choose. So, because of that, the per fiscal year fee is really sort of unknowable at this time until we sort of have some numbers that we can go back and look at. But what we can do to an extent is tell you what an average amount might be generated in a calendar year. So, given that And this is in the third paragraph. Given that they're in 2028, so using current BEB fleet size plus estimates of BEB growth in the future, adoption rate in the future, we can estimate that in 2028, there'll be roughly 15,500 around there, give or take, BEV is registered in Vermont. So at that fleet size and assuming the mileage base, the average mileage based rate of $154 per vehicle, you could expect us to generate around $2,400,000 in 2028. Again, going back to my first thing, how it gets broken up between FY 'twenty eight and FY 'twenty seven, I can't tell you because as per mentioned, but generally speaking, that's the number.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And is the 27 money booked in the '27 transportation budget?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So there's that language in section 22 that does allocate net revenue from this to the extent that there is net revenue, which sort of gets to the second point of this, and that's that PVP. So where it gets a little more complicated is that currently BEVs, when they register, they pay an $89 EV infrastructure fee. That's paid at the time of registration. Current law states that once the MBUF is enacted, that fee is repealed. So, they no longer pay that. But what you have is sort of a timing issue or question, I guess, a timing question based on what I mentioned before about payments of MBUFs being spaced out over the year. So let's take a new vehicle, for example. Currently, would register it, pay your registration fee, pay $89 upfront as you get registered. Switch to the M Buff, you're gonna register your vehicle and you'll be assessed a fee of $154 which you can then choose to either pay upfront or pay quarterly or pay $13 a month for twelve months. So we will be losing the $89 EVP and getting over the course of twelve months, dollars 150 back. But because of the timing issue, there's a question of when we will sort of see net positive revenue from this. So, in this chart, we sort of know that in calendar year '27, EV infrastructure fee revenue, if it goes away, it will be about $1,300,000 It's hard to know what that number will be for the MBUF.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And the EV infrastructure fee goes to one fund and the MBUF reference Yep. Other

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So, the EV infrastructure fee currently goes to the T Fund, then gets sent to ACCD for this program that expands EV chargers for Level one and Level two chargers throughout the state. That's currently where the EV infrastructure fee revenue is allocated. That would go away with the enactment of this fee. And then the MBOT revenues would go into the transportation fund. And then to your question, the plug in hybrid fee, the $44.5 fee, would also, instead of going to ACCD, would just go into the transportation fund. And no money would be to ACCD.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And then the staffing costs for the MBUF, that just comes out of Where does that come from?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That's a good question for the agency. To the extent that this will require a significant staffing at their offices. I know they are contracting with third party to do some of this work. I'm unsure at this time of the extent that that will

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: None of those costs are in the fiscal note. Okay.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Can I follow-up on that question? Because I have a related concern. Because I think, first of all, this is hard. And I'm seeing committee members here, and I just want to thank you for this work because I think this is important. I think I probably have the highest representation of EVs in the state in my district. I saw that in my emails. And I really support this. And I think we have to protect the T Fund. I'm curious if you also looked at the cost of running two different systems at the same time. And I'm wondering if there is an intent that is explicit anywhere to move to NBUF for everybody.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: So, all I know is currently the proposal is to do it for battery electric vehicles. There has been some discussion in the building of eventually moving that to more vehicles than that. As of today, it is solely based on the battery electric vehicles, and there is no proposal that I know of currently existing to expand that.

[Rep. Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: And did the agency transportation We're gonna

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: we'll hear from the agency. I have one on page three.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Page three. This speaks to the fact that I just mentioned that the $44.5 plug in hybrid EV infrastructure fee would no longer be going to ACCD. So essentially no T fund, if this bill is approved, would go to that program as it had been in the past.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Does that mean that the program stops?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Absent of funding that they get from somewhere else. I'm not sure if they have a funding source outside of the transportation funds that would go to it, but there'd be no transportation funds automatically sent to it.

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Is that program subset somewhere?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I think it's a program within their agency. I think it was run before we started sending them transportation fund programs. I don't know what the intent is after this takes effect. Then section 22 is the last section, which states that the net revenues generated from this fee would go to monies allocated to town highway aid or state aid for town highways. Of revenue generated or can't tell you. Unknown based on timing unknowns, essentially. That's what they estimated. My rough estimate is that in calendar year '28, you could see around $2,400,000 That is based on the number of expected EVs in the state paying an average of $154 in an EMBA. But I guess I'm just talking about the EV infrastructure fees. Oh, the EV infrastructure fee.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Because you have the 44 to 50 for the hybrid electric vehicles plug

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: in hybrids.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: And that would go to even though they're not paying a mileage based user fee in this bill?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: That would just go into the T Fund after this bill passes to be used for general whatever T Fund appropriations.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: So a full battery electric vehicle that's $89 each time?

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Apparently, yes.

[Rep. Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: It says it there.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The section 20 is And

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it's bi annual.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The Section 20 is only related to the plug in hybrid infrastructure fee. So those numbers there just represent that fee. Elsewhere in statute, but not specifically in this bill, is the sort of sunset of the BEV infrastructure fee, or the battery electric vehicle infrastructure fee. So two separate things.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You.

[Logan Mooberry (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Any

[Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: other questions for Logan right now? Thank you. We're going to take a five minute break before we hear from the