Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And here we are on the Lamoille's. It is Thursday, March '20. We are looking at an amendment to the transportation bill, and Damian Leonard is sitting right there to tell us about it.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hi. For the record, I'm Damian Leonard from the Office of Legislative Council. So there are handful of instances of amendment here. The first instance of amendment would strike out sections fourteen and fifteen, which are the changes to the pilot special fund to send the excess revenues or a portion of the excess revenues to the state aid for town highways, and those will be replaced with just the indication that those sections were deleted. K? Second instance oh, thank you.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: So where was it going before? You need to

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right now, the pilot special fund, that money is going to pilot payments, grand list stabilization payments, and there is a currently a one time appropriation for the Department of Taxes to provide grand list and appraisal assistance. This would have added that excess revenues above those amounts would be sent half of that would be sent to general state aid for town highways. And so this will strike that.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Later in the bill, we'll read about a way that we get more money to state aid for highways. Thank you. And then still leave the appropriations committee feeling like they can manage their situation.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Thank you. K.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright. The second instance of amendment strikes out all of section 19, which created a new chapter, the mileage based user fee chapter, and inserts a new section 19, which splits chapter 43 into two subchapters and renames the chapter road usage charges, since we have two types of charges here as you'll see. The first is the mileage based user fee in subchapter one. The important changes in that are in the payment of the mileage based user fee. There's one option for payment now, the annual payments at the end of your mileage reporting period. So at the end of each period, you're assessed a payment. For the mileage based user fee, that assessment is made within fourteen days after the reporting period ends. They mail it to you. You have forty five days to elect either a lump sum or a monthly or quarterly payment. You also, as we'll see in a moment, instead of having fifteen days to appeal that amount, you have forty five days to appeal that amount, but we'll get there. The you're gonna see a lot of these little highlights here. This was for the editors because I had to renumber everything. So we're gonna skip past a lot of the renumbering. Here, where you see I've highlighted the number of miles traveled for a mileage reporting period because we eliminated the pay as you go option as a implement right away option. This was simplified, and so that's all this reflects here is that just condensed what used to be two subdivisions into one. Subsection c, again, similar changes here. So the mileage based user fee rate is 0.014¢ per mile traveled. The reason we made that change is I realized that previously, the original version of the bill had had an annual inflator and had set out for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. This just says the mileage based user fee rate is this because it's ongoing. So that was more of a technical correction where you see the at that. In subsection D, we've added two there are two new exemptions here. The first is for vehicles that are owned and operated by the state. The second is for vehicles that are used as short term rentals, so rental cars. And we'll get to those with the second sub chapter of road usage charges. Chris, did you raise that concern on the record? Do you want

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to do that? I did not

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: on the record.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'll raise it on record. I

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: just didn't want to say, as Chris mentioned earlier.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Owned and operated by the state, I said that earlier, we don't need to be moving money from one column to another. It seems just like a waste of people's time. The other one is the short term rentals. And I brought it up to the agency of transportation. There's a lot of ways for them to completely avoid that fee. And so I would rather make sure that that's covered in another way.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Patrick made a suggestion that Damian has

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: put in further in language about ways we can cover that, roughly commercial councils. And it's short term rental cars, just in case anyone's Rental jumping into cars.

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

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Rental cars. So if

[Unidentified committee member]: you charge them yes.

[Unidentified representative (from Barre City)]: We've spent a

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: lot of

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: time with our rentals this year. So rental cars, a rental car company could register all their rental cars in another state and never be subject to this quite easily. We don't want to incentivize that.

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

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is the change in the period to appeal your assessment. It's gone from forty five days or fifteen days to forty five days after the assessment is mailed. And remember, mail includes email or digital notice too. So but that gives more than a month. So even with US Postal Service delays, individuals should have plenty of time to respond.

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Dan, just a stupid question. Yesterday, we had a discussion about a day is a day.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Yes. All be in multiples of seven.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I think an attorney told us all days should be in multiples of seven.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Not

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: just for the judiciary.

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: Yeah. Never mind.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I've never followed that rule. Just pointing it out. I always do fifteen, thirty, forty five, sixty half months for May. Perfect. Gosh. This is like tracking your hours at a law firm here. What increment? I'm gonna spill. Sorry. I'm having flashbacks here.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the in the interest payments earlier, we as we were walking through it, we discussed that there wasn't a way for an individual to request a waiver. So an individual may request at any time that the commissioner waive some or all of the amount of the overdue fee or interest due or both pursuant to subsection a of this section. The commissioner may, upon receiving a request, or on the commissioner's own motion. So this allows the commissioner to essentially say, I'm gonna waive this interest because there was a mistake made here or something like that without an individual having to request the waiver. That just is giving the commissioner permission to correct internal errors by issuing a waiver. May waive some or all of the amount of the overdue fee and interest required. If the commissioner and there were questions about the excusable neglect, I took another look at waiver provisions and realized that in my sleepy state as I was drafting this, I overlooked the easiest one, which is good cause. So if good cause existed for the delay in payment or if requiring payment would constitute an economic hardship. So in other words, if you have someone who has no money to pay the state anyway or very little money, the commissioner can decide to waive the fees.

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: Or Doug ate my homework.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. It's although maybe that is good cause. Yeah. Okay.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Alright.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Not gonna be drawn in here. In the appeals oh, actually, in the section above the appeals section, these are the powers of the commissioner. So we talked this morning about how one, the committee requested that the power to enter into reciprocal agreements with other states should be struck until such time as there are other states nearby that are operating mileage based user fees. And then the other powers were all related to hearing powers, and they're all already set out in three sections at the beginning of Title 23. So this just strikes all of those provisions that are either duplicated or would give reciprocal authority where there aren't surrounding states that have a mileage based user fee at this time.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: So, Representative Nelson?

[James Masland (Member)]: Yeah, question. Obvious question.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Think

[James Masland (Member)]: so why should why should we delete the language on reciprocal stuff? I would I would anticipate at some point there are gonna be some other states that are doing this.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I right. I thought the committee's request was that we take it out until such time as there are.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: That's so yeah.

[James Masland (Member)]: That's fine.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That was my understanding. And if I got that wrong

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: It seemed like remarkably intense and harsh language given that there were no other states to reciprocate with yet. That's all cool.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. In

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the next section, the committee had requested that there be an administrative interim administrative appeal. I highlighted in the discussions this morning that it only existed for the assessments, not for any other decisions. So this provides that any person can file appeal of any final decision, order, or finding of the commissioner within not more than forty five days. And the commissioner shall establish procedures for filing and hearing those appeals pursuant to the existing law in title 23. And then following that appeal, the individual can then appeal to the superior court under the rule for appeals from administrative decisions, which is in B. And then in subsection C and I forgot to highlight that portion at the beginning here, which provides following the final decision on an appeal. And then in C, the appeals provided by this section and subsection 4,303 F, which is the appeal from assessments, shall be the exclusive remedies for any person for review of assessment decisions, orders, or findings.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: It

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: just means that you can't these are the appeals that we're giving you. These are your options. You can't pick something else that may fit and then file an appeal under that. But you can still go to court? You can still go to court. That's what B provides. You can go to court under rule 74. So you have an appeal to court, an independent body. What you can't do is seek another avenue for appeal under a different statute or something like that that may be worded in such a way that you could argue that it applies. So that's that's what we're saying. So you're limited to the remedies that are on the paper here, but there is an administrative appeal followed by a court appeal for every decision or order under this chapter. So the this is new language here related to those rental vehicles. So for any electric pleasure car subject to the use tax imposed pursuant to 32 VSA eighty nine zero three d, and this is a special portion of the motor vehicle purchase and use tax, which applies a 9% tax on the rental charge for the rental of a motor vehicle in the state. There will be imposed on each transaction a road usage charge equal to 1% of that rental charge. So your total charge, instead of being 9%, will get to 10% now. So it's a 1% additional charge, which would be collected by the rental company and remitted to the commissioner and then deposited in the transportation fund. So this would be in lieu of a mileage based user fee for rental vehicles. Instead, when they rent the vehicle in the state of Vermont, this is gonna be in the taxes and fees assessed as part of that rental. And then we define rental charge to mean the same thing as in the purchase and use tax, just so that if anything changes, we stay consistent and rental companies don't need to figure out two different tax rates. The transition language here, because you've eliminated the pay in advance provision for newly registered vehicles and the pay as you go option, this has been simplified a bit. So it provides that if the initial mileage reporting period for a BEV begins before the BEV is required to renew its registration, there is a credit equal to the amount of the infrastructure fee paid. And then otherwise, your initial mileage reporting period is just whenever your first inspection begins begins with your first inspection after January 1. So it just gives a credit for folks who will start their mileage reporting period before they renew their registration.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And I was trying to address a concern that we talked to Patrick about to some degree, which is that folks paying in advance the first time and then paying afterwards all the other times seems like an incredibly confusing way to start a brand new payment regimen and didn't want to be having people pay twice. And so this seemed like a path forward.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the next thing that in here so the fourth instance of amendment would strike out the allocation of fiscal year twenty twenty seven mileage based user fee revenues because with no pay in advance option or pay as you go option, There will be no revenues between January and June 2027 on the program because your mileage you won't have any reporting periods that end during that time period. And it replaces it with two new sections. The first section requires a report from the Secretary of Transportation on or before February 15 regarding the potential for offering a pay as you go option and including a plan for implementation of a pay as you go program, as well as detailed information regarding anticipated staffing, administrative and information technology needed to implement and operate the pay as you go program, anticipated costs related to implementation and operation, and legislative language necessary to enable it. And then section 23

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Does everyone check why we would do that?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Section 23 is a transfer of funds. And I realized after or right before we started talking that I left out the fiscal year, so I need to add that in. But notwithstanding, any provisions of 19 BSA section 11 f To the contrary, section 11 f governs the trans transportation infrastructure bond fund and restricts what it can be used for. The amount of $2,200,000 is transferred from the transportation infrastructure bond funds to the transportation funds. And then of that amount, 1,700,000.0 shall be allocated to general state aid for town highways. The amount allocated shall be appropriated for class one, two, and three town highways and a portion distributed and used in the same manner as provided for under the current state aid program, but it shall not decrease the amount appropriated pursuant to that section under the standard formula for increasing that amount year over year or be subject to the annual inflationary adjustment provided for. And the reason we're doing that is so that amount from the base year when we put the inflator on it, each year it either goes up or stays the same depending on inflation. And it's a somewhat complicated inflator. But if there is an upward push, it'll move up or Or if there is no upward push, it'll stay the same. And if you added this amount to that, it would suddenly bump it up to another tier and you'd be inflating off the new number because it always looks at the previous year to inflate. So we just keep the two separate since this is a one time transfer.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And this covers the revenue loss of not having the two separate fee structure at the beginning and covers and far exceeds the amount that was anticipated from that waterfall mechanism they built into the pilot.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Representative Higley. So what was the anticipated revenue coming in from pilot money?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The revenue coming up from the pilot money?

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Trying to compare it to this new one time 1.7.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: This is much more than what would

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: have been available through the pilot fund. Going try

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: to pull up a sheet real quick. Again, I don't know if you're still logged in, but the chair with indulging me, if you could pull up House Transportation's committee page on Tuesday and pull up Ted's spreadsheet, It showed the committee on

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: my way.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Hey, did

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: you just walk me through all the language?

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

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Okay. Great. Okay. Perfect timing with your question, representative Higley. Thank you.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Alright. Oh, you're sick way.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So let me just scroll down here.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Alright. So you see go up just a little bit more so you

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: can see the arrows. Yep. There we go.

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: So the third column that says

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: FY twenty seven direct budget appropriations, the total of $15,800,000 is the amount that it's likely gonna be appropriated out of the pilot fund in FY twenty seven. So compare that against the next number down the 16.2, that's the amount of revenue that we expect to come into the pilot fund post town meeting day with the new towns being factored into the estimate. So the Delta is between that $16,193,000 of revenue and the $15,800,000 in expenses. So that's like in the neighborhood of about 400,000. The actual number will fluctuate a little bit because sometimes that 12.2 number ends up coming in less, but the amount that would have been available for Town Highway 8 would have been half of that operating surplus.

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: So if we just for

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the sake of argument, compare the 16.2 against the 15.8 and say dollars 400,000 just for the sake of this discussion, that prior language would have made $200,000 available to highway as opposed to 1,700,000.0.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Like a follow-up to, again, it looks like there may be cities and towns that are in precinct or percentage, additional 1%?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: The ones that were approved at this past town meeting to go to an additional 1% are reflected in that estimate.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: So the ones that are, would it come in the best next year or would it

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: be the following year? We made estimates once towns have made decisions. So once there's an affirmative vote from a town, then we'll work with the tax department to come up with the forecast,

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: but we do not Except for

[James Masland (Member)]: the situation like Stoke. Correct, that is an outlier. Okay,

[Mark Higley (Member)]: thank you for that. Again, if you could tell me or somebody can tell me that the transportation infrastructure bond fund, how much is in that and why can we use 1,700,000.0 of it this year?

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: I've referred to my colleagues.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Damien, do you want to have someone, or actually this is fine, I don't need to.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I can move this up and, okay. Almost said transportation infrastructure bond operating statement would probably be the most useful tool, but essentially last year there was $2,200,000 at the bottom of the fund. It was carried forward into FY '27 and was not proposed to be spent the government budget and was just sitting there. So this proposal would transfer it into the transportation fund and then spend £1.7 highway 80 and leave 500,000 in transportation fund to cover the potential revenue loss from the repeal of the EV infrastructure fee that will go into place in 01/01/2027. There's the gap between start collecting AMPA in '28 and the repeal of the EDD infrastructure being '27. So there's a little bit of money sitting there to sort of make sure the T5 has enough money to get through '27.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Again, what you're telling me is that money can't be used unless we or the governor puts it in his budget, right? That money that's in that fund, the Transportation and Transportation Bond Fund, can't be used by the transportation department for?

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: But right now it would not propose to be appropriated to any projects or things at the agency as of the budget that was passed out of house transportation.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: The reason I'm gonna ask- Go ahead.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Go ahead. To clarify, there is a lot of TIP money is appropriated all through the transportation budget, mostly for bridge projects. This amount represents an unallocated balance, that was on the bottom line.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: One could call on a couch cushion if one wanted to.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: And sometimes these things materialize because there's a lot of price sensitivity involved in the fund revenues because the biggest source of that has to do with the assessment on gas, and when gas prices go up, our money goes into that fund. So there's a little bit of variability in that fund with revenues for the future.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Ken, I guess my big concern is this is only one time money and using it from the pilot fund is an ongoing amount of money. Again, I'm not real familiar with how that money in that special fund infrastructure fund could be used, but I'm a little concerned about that.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: I'm also really concerned about the ongoing money for this, and want and think the pilot fund might be a really good place to pull it from. We don't have time to do all of the modeling and the estimates to make that decision strategically, and the amount from this waterfall was not gonna I'm worried the amount from the waterfall that they put into the bill is not enough to make enough of a difference. And so we'll feel like we solved the problem. The town still won't have enough money for their highway funds, and we'll stop talking about it. And by doing this one time money, we get the town highways more money than they would have, and we can keep talking about it for the rest of the session. We're going get another bill back from Senate transportation that I think will also have all kinds of local option tax things in it, and we can keep really live testimony going on it. Because I am also very concerned about that.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: But again, what we could do is keep the pilot farms and still rob from this invitation.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: We could, but I don't I don't know if it's enough to really do it, and we haven't had the time to really dive into the pilot fund right now. Because Ted just updated the estimates, and I want us to have real time to take testimony on it. Because don't know about you, but I have heard everyone in this entire building have an idea about how to spend that money. Definitely. The pilot money. And I want to have time to have the league in to discuss it as well.

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I just want to make sure everybody knows the pilot. What? To see pilot money from anything other than going back to places where it was raised so that these cities, I don't see money going to cities to pay for the homeless, to pay for emergency services for the home,

[Mark Higley (Member)]: to

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: pay for all kinds of things that cities are paying for. And they need their local authorities to extract energy. Thank you.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Just to follow-up on that, there's one of my towns that are able to take advantage of a 1%, you know, acts like that, so know, would certainly, if you wanna talk about a regional, you know, opportunity to help out somebody that know who already has, you know, this is a good way to

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: do This conversation is the exact reason I want us to have more than thirty minutes to figure this out. Because we are a microcosm of the entire building on this one.

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I absolutely need to have, I would love to have testimony in here about what it's costing for fire, rescue, police, and everything that's being spent on homelessness. That is data point. Thank you. But it hasn't come to this committee, and we need to see it.

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: I'm hoping just to get a very high level overview, yes, on the transportation infrastructure bonds on the TIB and

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: how it works.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: You like that from this team or that team? This team

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: would be

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I was gonna say that

[Unidentified member (not Matt Walker)]: three minutes would be perfect.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think Chris will do a better job than I will.

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Chris, I'm trying to just go the TIM Fund is a sort of separate fund in the realm of the transportation space that gets revenue from two sources. It gets a free set per gallon assessment on diesel, just like around $2,000,000 a year. And it gets the proceeds of a 4% assessment on gas. And that is adjusted quarterly based on the average retail price for tax adjusted in the buyer. So I don't have the revenue forecast right in front of me, but I think it brings in somewhere between like 16 and 18 ish million depending on where gas prices are. The fund was set up, Senator Weston set it up when he was the chair of house transportation back in the day as a way of issuing bonds to help transportation with a dedicated revenue to back up those bonds. Fifteen years ago, the state borrowed three different series of bonds, about $36,000,000 used those proceeds to bang out a lot of bridge and rail projects right around the Irene era, the Lake Shanting Bridge received the proceeds from it. We received some really flexible federal money there in Oakland that actually allowed us to pay off the rest of our debt. So we have no more outstanding TIB bonds and the amount of money in that fund that isn't needed for debt service is used for projects on a pay as you go basis. And there's a section of Title 19 that spells out all the rules that Damian is not withstanding here. That basically says you use that money to do like structures, bridges, serious roadwork, things with a long useful life. So when you look at the white book of transportation projects, you'll see the two funds of where a lot of the bridge projects are and there is this unallocated balance on the bottom line. And this has happened in the past where if the revenue forecast shows like one fund might be up and one might be down, sometimes there's an interfund transfer to balance each other out to the revenue forecast that's similar to what's the income. That was a great overview, thank you.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: And it

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: also says we have no debt if we

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: ever want in that fund and if we wanted to really leverage that

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: for some capital expenditures, we could. We have limited capacity to do that, yeah. And I think we maintained a coverage ratio in the past of like three to one. So like you can't, there's a real limit to how much of that money you wanna spend on debt service. But when we had bonds outstanding a few years ago, we're spending about 2 and half million a year on debt service. So yeah, now that that's gone, that bonding capacity, if it's heated, is there.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Any other questions for Damian? Thank you, Damian. Any other questions for JFO? That's great. Any other questions for Yes, sorry, Jim.

[James Masland (Member)]: Maybe not right now, but sometime soon. I was Rich Weston's vice chair when he set

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: up the TIP pots, and

[James Masland (Member)]: people wanna know how he came about that. It was an interesting story, and it's worth We can't replicate the exact same circumstances now, but it's a good learn if people want to hear about it.

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: I would love that sometime. Thank you.

[James Masland (Member)]: Okay, just tell me when.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Any questions for Matt Walker if he's willing to accept them?

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: So

[Unidentified committee member]: I understand that you guys were in a rush over there and that what we got was not what you intended. Can you tell us anyhow the high points that were left out that maybe we ought to do?

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Fist things now. Do you mean on the m bus?

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Matt, I can sit longer, house chair transportation. If there's a the issue of what I felt rushed would be that we sent this out to committee a couple of days earlier than what was expected, we would have spent that time entirely in the mileage based interview arena. Don't spend a lot of time on tax language, we don't, it's also a

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: brand new program, think you've

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: heard this, not a lot of other states have it. I would have liked to have gotten a lot further on the mileage based intricate language and I would generally say without having much time to go over all of the changes, think that the committee of tax and the Legis Council that relates to the language and information needed to be adjusted needs to be worked on it very well. I were expecting our committee that come January when it's implemented, we'll be back with updates and requests that have been needed in that area. So we would have liked to spend a couple more days on that. The issues around highway funding, that is something that is a big topic for the entire legislature. We've spent a lot of time, if people come around to the idea that we have a T fund problem that has systemic long term funding, but what I don't think I did a good enough job of and it's really starting to, and I appreciate the chair's comments, fixing the T funding helps with the state project, but it does nothing to the town highway structures and culvert and their programs. And that they face that same issue with incredibly rising costs and inflation eating away with it, and nothing in the T bills and nothing in transportation automatically increases anything for our town highway and road crews. And that is why our committee put in two different places an effort to really highlight the issue that somebody's got to be looking out somewhere to try to find help for the talent. And I appreciate very much the chair's comments related to that. That dialogue has to go forward. Fixing the T fund is critically important. There's a piece in the big bill about addressing some of that systemic change. There was a significant change last year with the JTOC transfer, for those of you that remember, but that's still not all the way fixed. But I'm also trying to make sure, and I think the chair here recognizes, that still doesn't help any of our towns and municipalities or cities. The town highway aid, the reason we push on that one is because it's the least restrictive and it's the most divided up formula by how many miles you have of each class of road. So that's why we highlight that one as trying to whatever help it is at whatever level, even if it is small, we're trying to highlight the entire committee was eleven-zero on trying to highlight this issue and I'm glad I get the chance to speak to her. So So language is what we really didn't get to, but our insistence on trying to drive the conversation around town highways is a huge goal for our committee.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Yes, thank you,

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Mark. Thanks, I

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: just want

[Unidentified representative (from Barre City)]: to appreciate what Representative Walker said and underscore that. So both North And South Main Street in Barrie City are state highways. And we are now looking for the second time in three to four years of just using municipal money to pave those places because we just can't wait for it because

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of the structural issues in the T Fund.

[Unidentified representative (from Barre City)]: So this is impacting rural communities, urban communities in our state, and it's an extremely real problem that we need to address. And also just naming that to revisit the pilot fund conversation that we've more or less moved on from. But there's We used other pilot money earlier this year in a way that I didn't love either. So I really, really hope that we're going to have that conversation sooner rather

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: than here.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: And if folks want to email me who you would like to invite for witnesses to have a deep pilot conversation, accepting suggestions. Anything else on this? Question for Matt.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Yeah, go for him.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: I hope I answered

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: that one.

[Unidentified committee member]: Very well. Thank you, Matt. And what is your opinion, if you don't mind sharing it, about what we just heard? My way of operating is I hate being rushed. I can't thank you for rushed. And here's an example. So can you give me your opinion of what you've just heard from Damian, in whom we have a lot of trust, but audience addiction?

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: It's a little bit different than the usual, but I appreciate that. I support what our committee's work is and I very much want to highlight that conversation and I think that the pilot fund is discussed all the way through the building, and it was our effort to be part of that conversation. I appreciate that we're in that part of that conversation. Because there's additional money for towns, which is one of our highest priority, I would imagine that our commission would support the direction of the amendment with a pretty significant look to the commitment to the future conversation and a hope that even though we're only a wall of heart, I think a lot of times she stays on a lot of different topics and a lot more to go on, but this one is obviously our number one priority and perhaps we could occasionally put a window over a wall in there or the hole in the wall. We can talk a little bit more about our transportation struggles. I think given the limitations of where we're at and what the I think that we would suspect that we would want to it's a major priority for the committee to have more money for town highways and to have people understand that and I think we would, because the amount of money is more, that we would go in that direction. Because now everybody's aware that pilot money is being used for other things than towns. I would love the opportunity to say that 100 times on the floor so that everybody understands the next level of the conversation. There's more money here for towns than there was in the building that's set over, but I don't want to give up on the issue much forward. I hope that helps. We were able to put the escalator in last year and it will compound yearly and that was about 1,400,000.0 more through the various programs for the towns last year. This is 1.7. I guess I will try to convince the committee that's a small step in the right direction compared to more. If I have 11 more people that are aware of the issues facing T funds and town highways, I will think that we make progress, and hopefully we'll be able to make more the next time. My limited time in

[Chris Rupe (Joint Fiscal Office)]: the building tells me incremental progress

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: is the only way that we really move forward.

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: That seemed that way. Thank you, Matt. Thanks.

[William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: Madam Chair.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Representative Canfield.

[William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: I move that the committee finds draft 1.1 of the committee amendment to H nine forty four friendly.

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Thank you. Representative

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Canfield moves that we find our amendment to H nine forty four Favorable. Representative Holcombe seconds. Damien, it's 1.2 because

[James Masland (Member)]: you have to

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: do a thing. Right?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. That's not clear. Yeah.

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Oh, it's

[Matt Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: 1.2.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Awesome. That's his story, Sean.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Representative Holcombe second, any discussion?

[Mark Higley (Member)]: We'll probably be voting no, but just to keep this conversation live and make sure that at least one no vote indicates that pretty concerning, especially for my small communities.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Remember, you're getting more your town's getting more money, but will you send me suggestions for testimony for the when we do the pilot? Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing no further discussion, if the clerk could please call the roll.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Representative Branagan? Yes. I'll vote yes as representative Burkhardt. Representative Higley?

[Mark Higley (Member)]: I don't.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Representative Holcombe?

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Representative Kimbell?

[Charles Kimbell (Ranking Member)]: Yep.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Representative Masland? Yep. Ode? Yes. Representative Page is absent. Representative Waszazak? Yes. Representative Canfield? Yes. And Representative Kornheiser? Yes. We have voted the amendment favorable nine eleven.

[Mark Higley (Member)]: Oh, that's not good.

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: That's the second time we've done that today. Thanks to the tone. Okay.

[William Canfield (Vice Chair)]: I don't care. I move that we find nine forty four, as amended, favorable.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: Thank you. Representative Canfield moves to find H nine forty four favorable. Representative Fulton seconds. Any discussion of the bill as amended? Seeing none, it's

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: a quick and sweet spot on roll. Representative Branagan? Yes. I'll vote yes. Is representative Burkhardt? Representative Higley? Vote. Representative Holcombe? Representative Holcombe?

[Rebecca Holcombe (Member)]: Yes. Representative

[Bridget Burkhardt (Clerk)]: Kimbell? Yes. Representative Masland? Yep. Representative Ode? Yes. Representative Page is absent. Representative Waszazak? Yes. Representative Canfield? Yes. And Representative Kornheiser? Yes. We have voted the bill favorable as amended, also at nine.

[Emilie Kornheiser (Chair)]: You. Everyone, if we could all just hang out for a few minutes while Julia and John come. We'll go off live or mute or something like that, and then look at yield building language before tomorrow.