Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay, we are live. This is Senate Institutions. It is Friday, 02/07/2026. And we will be hearing from Maureen Bach, who's the Chief Innovation Officer of the Oregon Department of Transportation. And I just want to set the stage a little bit. In the Transportation Committee, we were learning about how other states manage an mBuff. It's a miles based user fee and Oregon is one of those states. And I was particularly impressed by the way that Oregon handles its IT contracts. They have rolling contracts and since this committee has jurisdiction over IT, especially state IT, I thought this would be a helpful conversation to have. So Maureen, if you could just introduce yourself for the record, that would be great.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: Good afternoon, I'm Maureen Bach. I'm the Chief Innovation Officer for the Oregon Department of Transportation. I run the Office of Innovative Funding, which includes the road usage charge. That's what we call it out here, which is a managed based user fee program. Done that for about ten years. Have the public private partnership programs. We're working on a connected vehicle ecosystem and a bunch of other items. But the thing that I'm probably most familiar with is the way that we set up our road usage charge program. And we did that with a set of outcome based requirements, technology agnostics, knowing that the automotive industry is really being innovative and vehicles are transforming very quickly. So we didn't want to be tied into technology that wouldn't allow us to evolve as the automotive industry did. So when we set up those contracts, we did those as contracts that would allow any company to come in and propose based on the requirements and propose any technology. So those are open procurements. We've had what we call account managers come and go based on those requirements. And that has served us well because we have evolved the program in the ten years that we have operated it by using that kind of procurement mechanism. So we are currently in the middle of rewriting the requirements because we now have a mandate to go live with electric vehicles at the point of re registration. So when they register starting 07/01/2027, they will be required to be in the road usage charge program. They have a choice of paying by the mile or paying a flat fee. And we are expecting our private sector partners, the groups that we call account managers to manage that on our behalf. And so once again, we are in the process of rewriting our requirements so they're outcome based and technology agnostic. One of the things that makes that work for us is we have a service level agreement once we enter into a contract with any one of those entities. So they have to report uptime on their websites, customer service outcomes, and those kinds of things. So we're really focused on them performing what they say they will do. I'm going to leave it there and let you go ahead.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's wonderful. If you could send us or point us to a place on your website where we can get the materials that you use, that would be very interested to have that service agreement as well as the way you send out when you're looking for bids.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: So we actually post all of our procurements on a website called OrganVise. It's run by our Department of Administrative Services And if people have to register to be a vendor, then they get pushed notification when we update the requirements or anything like that. So I will get you a link to that. It may be next week before I can do that.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's fine.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: It's a little cumbersome.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I actually did get to that website and I didn't want to pretend I was a vendor. So Understandable. I don't know. So you'll you'll make it so I can access it. What's honesty? Okay. Cool. Do you

[Unidentified Committee Member]: all have questions? Okay.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I mean, the savings, as I recall, when you talked in transportation, you were paying much, much less for these services than the other states were paying?

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: We weren't initially because we were setting up a market for these services, but we are now negotiating with them being able to make a profit, but based on what are their fixed and variable costs based on the volume of who's enrolled with them. And the benefit to us has been they have come in with new technologies as the cars have changed. For example, the Society of Automotive Engineers has been updating its standards for using the vehicle as a payment platform. So they published, I think two or three years ago, a couple of standards. One's the J3217 and one's the J3217R, which is based on road use and charging. The other one is for tolling. And if we would have procured a system, we would be in a position where we would be scrambling to update our technology to leverage that kind of innovation in the automotive space. And instead, these private sector companies are leading the way and adopting those kinds of standards and leveraging them so we can do business more effectively.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, that's great. And that's not even something that we've heard about in transportation.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: Well, and then the Omnia consortium actually does certification of those kinds of technologies and connected vehicles. And they did a presentation yesterday about software defined vehicles. And so that's like the next iteration of vehicles that are going to be coming out, where the vehicle itself will be a computer just like your cell phone is and technology would be pushed to that on a routine basis.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Oh, my goodness. There needs a lot of regulation, I hope. I mean, privacy and data. Yeah. Wow.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: It's a brave new world out

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: there Yeah, in the automotive who did that? Who was?

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: The gentleman was named

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: What to the was the agency or organization that you said? Omniair Consortium.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: Near Consortium? Omnier. Oh, Omnier. Oh, And I capital AIR Consortium.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. Wow.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: They have been working on certification of like connected vehicle technology, roadside units, those kinds of things that enable connected vehicles to operate well. There's been a little bit of progress on the autonomous vehicle front. Again, those are just another iteration of connected vehicles, but Omniair does a lot of certification in that space.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay,

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: we should definitely know about them.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: I can send you information about them.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, that would be great.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: Right.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And okay. We're right after lunch. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Right after lunch and a week break starting as soon as we're done.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: Oh, okay. Then you want me to stop talking. Get it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No, you're fine. We very much appreciate you taking the time. It's always good to hear from another state.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah. And if

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: you have any questions, I'm available. Just send me an email or send me a text or something and be happy to answer your questions.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, you have been very available. I really appreciate that. And we can so we can learn a lot by just staying in touch with you. So,

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: My life is, you know, an object lesson of what not to do.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: No. All right. Well, thank you very much.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: Yeah. Have a great weekend.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Yeah, great week off.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Week off, yeah, a week off, so thank you.

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: I'll send you a bunch of information and if you have questions, I look forward to hearing from you.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: That's perfect, thank you. Thank

[Maureen Bach, Chief Innovation Officer, Oregon Department of Transportation]: you. Now. Bye.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: Okay. So just the other thing, is we're going to try to get the committee conference on H50, I think it was going next week or not next week. Keep saying that the week that we're not here. The week that we are here, probably in the evening so that it doesn't interfere with our meeting.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. Cool. Okay?

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: And I think what I wanna do is get, have the first meeting, hear what their issues are, and then come talk to the whole committee.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I I think it'll be pretty straightforward.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. Don't think you have a lot more either.

[Wendy Harrison (Chair)]: I don't think so. But alright. Anything else? Nope. All good?