Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Staff (AV/Streaming Tech)]: You are live.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is Senate Transportation. We are Friday 2020, and we are about to hear from, Scott Cummings, the assistant commissioner for finance in, Virginia Motor Vehicles Department. And, Scott, we have a little slow start for some of us. We have a couple of committee members that will be joining us very shortly that are at other meetings. And I'm gonna have the committee members, the other two, introduce themselves. My name's Richard Westman. I'm from North Central Vermont, a county called Lamoille, and I'm chair of the Senate Transportation Committee here.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Morning Scott, thanks for being here with us. I'm Wendy Harrison, I'm in Windham County, which is Southeast corner of the state.

[Sen. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: And I'm Pat Brennan and

[Sen. Richard “Dick” Mazza (Member)]: I represent Grand Isle County, which is right up, goes right up to the border, Canadian border.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We have been, our committee has been, taking testimony from the states that are in the forefront on this. We heard from Hawaii last week, and they invited us to come and visit. And, you know, and they did that in the middle of a snowstorm for us. And then we've had Utah and Oregon, and you're the fourth of the four that and so did do did he have handouts maybe? Yes. He have. And we so we have your your your information, and we could either look along or we can you can post it. And why don't you tell us about yourself, and then we'll go into this.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Thank you, chair Westman committee members, for the opportunity to come and speak with you today. Virginia, when we launched our mileage based user fee program in 2020, we stole a lot from Oregon and Utah who had programs at the time. So it's only fair that that we pay it forward and and come speak to the other states who are looking at doing something similar now. So I can is it easier, Chair, to share the presentation, or would you rather just see my face as I speak? I can do whichever.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Whatever you choose, I think will work for us. You know, if you wanna share, I think the other people that are in the room here with us, we have a couple of staff people here.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And we have some people looking online. It might be better if you shared, but I think we're open to either.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: All right, well I will certainly share then. That's a good

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: All right.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Okay. So, thank you again for the opportunity to be here this morning. Virginia has been using taxes on motor fuels to fund transportation for over a hundred years now. And in that time, we've diversified our transportation funding sources a good deal. We've expanded to the retail sales tax, recordation fees, taxes on insurance premiums, registration fees, but about 25% of our transportation budget still relies on fuels taxes. And in 2018, Virginia received notice of how shaky a reliance on fuels taxes is going forward into the future. 2018 marked the first year that vehicle miles traveled in the state increased, but the revenue from fuels taxes decreased when compared to the prior year. That scenario had never happened before. Both of those, indicators had fallen in times of economic recession. But, typically, when vehicle miles traveled increased, then the revenue from the taxes on the fuel used to travel those miles also increased. And the fact that that didn't happen, meant that that issue that had been looming on the horizon of of increased fuel efficiency in vehicles had finally arrived in the Commonwealth Of Virginia. And in response, the Virginia's legislature directed the state secretary of transportation to convene a a working group to study the sustainability of our transportation funding structure and the impact of the increasing fuel economy and vehicles. So that working group, met and looked at a lot of data, and they confirmed that the trend of rising vehicle mule vehicle miles traveled, increasing and and fuels tax revenue decreasing was was a trend that was here to stay in the future. The report determined that it was in part due to electric vehicles that everybody thought would be the culprit, but they also found that rising fuel economies and traditional internal combustion engine vehicles was a major contributing factor to the decline in the revenue. They saw there's some reports, that showed that not only was fuel economy increasing, but it was just going to accelerate, moving forward into the future. And that is that trend is is played out by a pretty simple analysis. If you look at a motorist who replaces a a ten year old sedan that was probably getting a fuel economy in the mid twenties, 20 miles per gallon. The new vehicle is probably gonna get something in the in the mid 30 mile per gallon range there. Driving habits aren't gonna change. They're gonna add the same amount of wear and tear and congestion to the transportation network, but their contribution in fuels taxes to mitigate that impact is gonna fall. This table on this slide was pulled from the the study report, that was released as as part of the working group. The consultants that were helping the working group identified what the vehicle miles traveled should be providing for transportation revenues from the number of gallons used by vehicles. And you can see the small box, 25. 6,000,000. That's the impact from EVs by 2030. Virginia's EV registration numbers have been increasing exponentially but it's a very small starting point. So, even though it's increasing twenty, thirty, 40%, it's still in in 2030 was gonna measure about a 100 or 250,000 vehicles. Big I'm impact sorry.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So let me, just ask on your chart. Is the 02/1934 also include the 25 and is fuel from is the internal combustion engines or is it what's the red box next to it, the two thirty four point four?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: That is the impact from fuel efficiency in traditional internal combustion engines. About a 10% a 10 a factor of 10, increase compared to the impact from EVs. The, overall fuel usage was expected to drop by about 250, million gallons by 2030. Part of that, a small part of that was from EVs, and a much larger portion was from increasing fuel efficiency in in standard internal combustion engine vehicles.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So you're so this chart is I'm just trying to understand it. So, this chart projects out to 2030, and the the starting point of the 06/2002, is that a starting point of today?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Yeah, 2038 but yeah, that was that was the starting point from when the the study was being conducted. They made an adjustment based on population projections and so forth that by 2030, the gallons should be providing 753 let's see here. This is I think this is gallons, but, you know, we we should be seeing 750,000,000 gallons being used, and that's gonna fall significantly.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So just so I'm clear of the chart, the revenue at the start of 2018 is $681,000,000. And what we need to subtract from that is the twenty five point six and then we subtract 234.4 and that's the drop off. So the 25 is electric vehicles, but the 234 is internal combustion engines themselves.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Correct. Yes, sir.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Excellent. That, that actually this I I haven't seen this chart from any of the states. It's very interesting to be able to quantify in in the the whole piece because we as you get The view is it's electric cars only and this really tells a picture of it's across the board.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Yes, sir. That is what the the working group found. The the EVs were sort of the the the culprit that was quickly identified as this, but when they dug into it, they learned that while in, you know, the very long term, twenty years or so, EVs were were gonna be a big issue. The the problem that we were facing now when we're looking at 2018 revenues compared to 2017, that wasn't from EVs. That's from internal combustion engine vehicles.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is very helpful. Thank you.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: And I can provide a copy of the 2018 study report to Megan if you like.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That would be great if we could get that report and be able to reference that report.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Absolutely. So the working group recommended a number of near term, mid term, long term solutions to address the issue. As we were just discussing, they found that adopting solution that just targeted EVs or maybe EVs and hybrids alone would not address the issue that we were seeing. And so we needed a number of long term and near term solutions. The study recommended in the near term increasing the fuels tax rate and indexing it to inflation to stop erosion from market forces and other inflation factors. And then they recommended long term, we just need to stop trying to rely on the gas tax altogether and move to a mileage based user fee. The working group recommend recognized that moving away from fuels taxes was a a big lift, and so they they recommended a midterm strategy that we gain some mileage based user fee experience through an approach where we would collect another near term solution, a highway use fee on a per mile basis. The highway use fee was aimed at those increasing efficiency vehicles. I'll go into more detail, but they recommended that those efficient vehicles should be paying an additional fee to recognize the efficiency that is saving them from fuel taxes at the pump. And so as a mid term solution, we could gain some vital experience collecting a fee on a per mile basis while still relying on the fuels tax for the main portion of our revenue. That study came out in December 2019, and Virginia's General Assembly met in January 2020, right on the tail of the report being released. And they adopted many of the recommendations that were contained in the report. Bill, Senate Bill eight ninety and House Bill fourteen fourteen were companion pieces of legislation, and they had a a number of of transportation provisions. Among those, the bills increased the gas tax by 5¢ a year for two years, so so 10¢ altogether. And they indexed it to the consumer price index moving forward. Every year on July 1, we look at the inflation from the previous calendar year and increase the gas tax by that percentage. The bill also established the highway use fee that was referenced in the study report. It looks at what the average vehicle pays in fuels taxes and then looks at fuel efficient vehicles, which the bill defines as all vehicles that get a fuel economy of 25 miles per gallon or greater. And then through a calculation, it determines what the efficient vehicle, how much less the efficient vehicle is paying than the average vehicle and assesses a fee at the time of the vehicle's registration to make up the difference. The bill provided two ways that that could be paid at the time of registration or through this testing program that we were setting up, an optional way that motorists could pay that highway use fee on a per mile basis. The highway use fee became effective immediately on on 07/01/2020, and then the legislature gave us two years, to research and identify the optional, MBUF program and have that set up by 07/01/2022. So, this is a chart showing Virginia's gas tax rate over since its history in in 1923. You can see there had been increases over time. You know, a few pennies here or there that would then be the rate for a number of years until inflation or other construction cost forces caused it to be increased again. And then you can see the impact from from 2021 when we when we had those two nickel increases and then the inflation adjustment every year thereafter.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So your gas tax, is it a flat per penny per gallon? Is it a wholesale tax? Is it a combination?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: We the the tax that the highway use fee is tied to is a a flat per gallon fee. It had been 16.2¢. That's when the $2.05 cent increases apply to it. So it went up to 26.2¢. And then inflation is put onto that, and it's 32¢ in change now. And you can see the impact of the increases in the rate on on the table at the bottom of this slide. You can see that the dwindling year to year, the decreases compared to 2019 and 2020. And then as we started putting the increases in place, it it has stopped the the losses that we were seeing from the fuels taxes, the inflation, and the and those two initial increases, you know, we're still seeing erosions, if you will, from fuel economy in the fuels taxes, but the rate increases are are mitigating that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's interesting because you can see the drop off going out further.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Just a question. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Sheridan. So this seems like a very logical and fair thing to do, but it's generally not popular. Did you do a lot of outreach to the public before the tax was increased?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: No. Virginia was, I think, rather perhaps fortunate or what the the report came out, and that was the momentum that the legislature needed with support from the governor's office at the time. And the the legislation came out, was proposed, adopted, and and put into effect, between the December release of the report and the passage of the legislation the following spring.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's great. So then maybe just a follow-up. Did the working group includes businesses perhaps?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Yes. It was a a wide range of of stakeholders, from, you know, large users of fuel, suppliers, distributors, the the motor vehicle dealer industry, was involved. Lots of government agencies, some some, think tank policy types. It was a wide range of of groups that were contributing to the findings of the of the stakeholder group.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. So that makes sense that that you would have that support because you had it from the beginning because they were part of the process. That's terrific. Thank you.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: So, this table shows the revenue from the highway use fee. As I mentioned, it's a formula. The code sets out the formula that we use. It sets the average vehicle. The consultants are doing identified that the average fuel economy for the fleet of registered vehicles in Virginia was 23.7 miles per gallon, and they also found that the average number of miles that a Virginia driver uses is 11,600. So that becomes the basis of the formula. A 20 throug 23.7 mile per gallon vehicle driving 11,600 miles uses 489 gallons of gas. It, then applies the gas tax that's in effect at that time. As I said, it it increases every July 1. So then the the formula knows how much the average, vehicle pays in in fuels taxes. Every fuel efficient vehicle, every 25 mile per gallon vehicle and up is assessed through that same formula and and calculated the difference that they're not paying, and the highway use fee is 85% of that difference. So at the very bottom of the range, a 25 mile per gallon vehicle is is paying almost a $150 in fuels taxes, and so the the 85% difference is $6.86. At the other end of the spectrum, an EV, which pays no fuels taxes at the pump, is assessed 85% of the full 155 amount, and so that is a $131.88. So while the fuels tax increases every July 1, the highway use fee minimums and maximums also are indexed to inflation and adjust, every July 1. So the increase yes, sir.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So you finish, and then I'll I'll butt in.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Alright. So the the increase that you see in the in the revenue, between f y twenty one and and what we're expecting in f y twenty six, that's a mix of an increasing rate as well as an increase in the number of vehicles that are classified as fuel efficient. A lot of new vehicles sold every year now fall in the 25 mile per gallon and up category. So that's a blend of of increasing number of vehicles that are assessed the fee as well as the the increase in the rate. And this the diagram or the the visual on on the right just kinda shows, you know, the electric vehicle is paying all highway use fee. The average vehicle is paying all gasoline, and all those fuel fuel efficient vehicles are paying some mix depending on how fuel efficient they are.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is there a report that talks about the basis of how you came up with the how did you end up at 85%? How did they end up at picking fuel efficient 25 miles per gallon instead of say 30? Is there any background material to help with how you came up with the numbers in the formula?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: I I don't have any background information. I'm not sure. You know, the study just has it at this level. I believe they they determine if 23.7 is the average, then everything above that is efficient. They rounded it to 25 a little bit just because that's a nice clean number. Is

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that is this in the report that was done?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: This came this is part of the report. I'm I'm not sure how detailed they go behind the scenes of the highway use fee, but it does talk about how a a fee like that on efficient vehicles is what is necessary.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that's helpful. And when we get the report, we'll go through the report and you might get a couple of emails from Megan or one of us asking some deep more detailed questions as we go through that. So

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Certainly.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But this is helpful. Thank you.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: So you can see by that that middle example vehicle in in the in the visualization, it it the amount of the highway use fee varies depending on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle, but it always assumes that every vehicle drives eleven six hundred miles. There's no consideration for a vehicle that's only driven on the weekends by somebody who uses mass transit every day or something like that. So that's where the legislation proposes the mileage based user fee option for people who who feel that they are gonna drive significantly less than 11,600 miles. So the the mileage based user fee option, which we call mileage choice, is the program that allows, motorists to to pay their highway use fee on a per mile basis. Virginia contracts with Amovus to act as our commercial account manager. We initially signed the contract with Amovus in December 2021, and the program went live as legislatively directed on 07/01/2022. There's a process that customers have to use since the highway use fee is paid at the time of the registration. Customers need to choose to enroll in mileage choice at v a mileage choice dot com before the registration period expires. And Movus has an an interface into our system. When the customer puts in their information, Movus can interface with DMV system and identify the vehicle and get returned the highway use fee amount as well as the per mile amount that needs to be charged. And then when the enrollment is complete, Mobius comes back into DMV system and turns on an indicator showing us that the customer's participating in Mileage Choice so that when the customer subsequently registers their vehicle or renews their registration, we don't charge them the highway use fee since they're gonna pay that on a per mile basis through Immovus. DMV is also partnered with the Eastern Transportation Coalition on a number of grant funded and projects. We did a lot of ad campaigns, but right before the program was rolling out and going live in 2022. There were a lot of news stories, in 2020 when the bill was was being passed about the new highway use fee and the upcoming, mileage based option. But in those two years, that media coverage had kinda died out, and we really needed to generate some buzz to get that get the word out again. And so ETC was great for helping us leverage the connections to the media campaign resources that they had, and I will talk a little bit more about our efforts.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So how would we Amovus what's their system like and what's the structure structure of their system? What what do they do?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: So, Emovus, it's a turnkey solution that Virginia contracted with. So when a customer goes to vamilagevamilagechoice.com, they're actually on a site. It's a it looks like a D and B site, but it's really the customer's interacting with the Movis. So they provide the enrollment process for the customer. Customers can choose whether they're gonna participate with their vehicle's telematics software system or if they're gonna use a plug in device. If they choose the plug in device, Amovus ships them that device to plug into their car, or Amovus uses their their software tools to connect with the vehicle itself. Amovus' system uses those two avenues to collect all the mileage information, and then they determine the monthly invoice amounts. There's a a prepaid account much like EZ Pass that customers are debited every month, and then it auto renews against their credit card when the balance gets low enough. Amovus sends the customers the invoices and and shows them how much is being deducted, and then they transfer that revenue to Virginia. Amovus also runs a a customer contact center. So if there are questions about the devices or participation or anything like that, they're Imovus handles that. Virginia has very little interaction day to day with the customers, so our staffing impact is very low, and, Imovus handles, all of the customer processing.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We probably would like to talk to somebody if Imovus if you had any contacts there that might be might be good for us to get more details about what they do.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Yes. I can I can provide our our main contact, and then I'm sure he can give you over to the sales folks who can answer all of your questions?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think I that would be great if you could do that for us.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Yes, sir.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: When customers enroll, they can, choose a GPS or non GPS. They can either turn it off in their telematics if they want or the device, the actual plug in device that is sent is determined at the factory. There's a way that they can make it GPS enabled or to turn that off. Virginia doesn't require GPS information for participation. There's no financial benefit to the customers. Unlike Oregon, we don't discount out of state miles or miles traveled on private roads. You know? So the the non GPS system, just counting the miles, is is all we need to determine how the distance that the motorists travel. But the GPS enabled option, does provide some additional features on the smartphone app that's required, as part of the enrollment process. There's some trip statistics and find my car and some other things that customers find valuable. So they do it's about sixty, forty, 60% turn on the GPS and 40% don't. But that's one of the options that we made available just to to increase participation for those who don't want their mileage continually tracked by the location. This chart shows the enrollment from the very beginning of the program to now. There are about 7,000,000 registered vehicles in Virginia, about 2,000,000 of them meet the definition of a fuel efficient vehicle and pay the highway use fee. So at at roughly 25,000 participants, we have about 1% of the eligible population participating in in Mileage Choice. Three quarters of them use that plug in device that Movus will ship, and a quarter of them use the software system that's already in their vehicle. You can see the ramp up from when we first launched. The program was was very successful. We were anticipating we'd have enrollment levels that kind of matched what Utah had experienced the year before. Utah's program at the time was only electric vehicles hybrids while we had all the other fuel efficient vehicles. But the ex the thought was we'd have relatively low participation from vehicles at that low end of of the fee amount just because the the burden of enrolling in the program and participating to save a few dollars, we didn't think that would attract, many customers. And what we have found is that customers participating in the program is a wide range of of the fuel economy. We have a lot of participants who have, internal combustion engine vehicles at the 25, 26, 27, mile per gallon rate who are participating in the program even though they're not saving a whole lot of money. They are, interested in in paying only, you know, their fair share, only what they what they want or what they, should be paying based on their mileage. A lot of them like the technology and want to participate in something new. Those who have enrolled in the program do like it. We are seeing 80% renewing for a second year. Three quarters are still participating from two years later. So it's a very popular program. Most of the participants are saving money. The the highway use fee is the cap for what they're paying. So if they do enroll in the program and find that they travel more than 11,600 miles, they won't pay anymore. It'll stop at whatever they would have paid if they just paid the highway use fee at the time of registration. So it's a low risk program for those that can only save money if they drive less. So they like it, and they continue to renew. On average, participants record about six and a half million miles every month and pay about a $100,000 in fees. The program costs about 200,000 a month to operate, so it is not a, a revenue neutral, process. We have been leveraging a federal ST SFA grant that, we were awarded a $3,300,000 grant a couple years ago to offset the cost of operating the program. That's helped us be revenue neutral as we've experienced or, you know, learned from this program and experienced the findings that we're having. Since the beginning of the program, we've collected about $2,000,000 in fees for over 200,000,000 miles traveled. So it is a it's showing us that it's a viable, option. The, the plug in device, the telematics, it works. It it also is showing us that it's a relatively expensive way to to collect revenue, and it's, you know, bouncing that against fuels taxes, which cost about one to 2%, you know, for collection costs. I'm not sure that it is a a sustainable approach. We're very interested in looking at what Utah is doing with the odometer capture quarterly and seeing if that is is a viable option for collecting fuels tax or collecting odometer information to assess mileage based user fee. But we continue to operate this program and and learn more so that we can share it as we work in Virginia to address the need to replace fuels taxes and to to share it across the the country with states like Vermont.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How long is your contract with Movus?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: We initially signed a three year contract, and last summer, we extended it for an additional three years. We were able to negotiate some rate reductions. Know, Amovus hadn't had a program quite as large as ours. So the as we went through the program and saw how many customers were renewing their participation, which lowers the cost for the acquisition of that plug in device, that's one of the main cost drivers. The OBD two, devices that we use for three quarters of our participants, it costs about $70.75 dollars for each plug in device. So as participants, stay in the program for two, three, four years, the the acquisition cost, is amortized over a longer period of time. Initially, even Movus was trying to recover all that cost in the first year because they didn't know how many customers would stick around. So we were able to negotiate some cost savings, but it is still a relatively expensive endeavor.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, you know, we're quite grateful that you went in front of us. We were hoping the costs come down over time before we're forced to move in this area. Senator Brennan.

[Sen. Patrick “Pat” Brennan (Member)]: I was just gonna ask the question I asked the other day, I think it was Utah. Does the state bear the cost of the Mobius unit or does the consumer?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Yeah, state does. There's no cost to the consumer to participate in the program. And, you know, we look at it as a learning tool. It's a permanent program in our system. You know, it's a statute, but it is definitely a pilot we're learning. The highway use fee is what has sort of resolved the issue of the fuel economy and those fuel efficient vehicles. And so when you look at the cost of $2,000,000 to explore mileage based user fee and the fee coming in is nearing $100,000,000, it's a relatively minor cost to continue to explore. One of the complaints that we hear about the highway use fee is that it is a significant amount to pay upfront at time of of registration and that amount's only going to increase as you know the the price of fuel goes up the number of fuel efficient vehicles. We're going to have more consumers who are looking at at paying a $130,140 dollars upfront at the time of registration. Virginia's registration fee is only $30.75 for a standard vehicle. So it is quite a jump to go from $30 to add $130 on top of that. So looking at how we can collect more on a per mile basis and lower the one time impact to consumers is something we continue to want to explore.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So just, again, so it's $30 for your register regular registration fee. Mhmm. And then, the extra fee on top is a 130.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: For an electric vehicle, it ranges from the the $6.86 at the 25 mile per gallon level all the way up. So every fuel efficient vehicle, 26 miles, 27 miles, 35 miles, they each have a a unique fee based on that formula that runs through that compares that fuel economy level to the average.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The 85% equates to 130. So at the time of registration for these, the total would be around 160.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: For an electric vehicle, right?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And my apologies, Cummings, I came in delayed to your presentation, so you may have already answered this question. So with the I think this must be the Amovus, the little cube. That is you have to have a smartphone to do that for the To participate

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: in the program. The the smartphone is used. There's an odometer capture photograph that's uploaded into the app that Imovus has, and then we do quarterly captures to true up and ensure that all the miles were captured through the plug in device. Okay. So that is that is a limiting factor for blanket participation across the state is we do need to have a smartphone for participation.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, in Vermont, I would say while we have maybe a high rate of adoption of the smartphone, there's enough people who don't that I think we would lose out on a few people, so I appreciate that. And then I just had another question related to the chart that you provided on page 11. I'm just really not understanding what the chart means. I apologize if you could, is it each blue dot represents a number of participants?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Yeah, across the bottom that represents the fuel economy. So going from the 25 mile per gallon through up through, you know, into the range that hybrids have and all the way up to an EV. And then the number of vehicles participating in our program is the other axis. And so you can see it at the very the very first dot all the way on the left about let's call it 700 vehicles. Those are participating at 25 mile per gallon vehicle. So those are are motorists that pay $6.86 as part of their highway use fee, yet they've enrolled in a program that allows them to pay that on a per mile basis. When when we were first putting this program together, we thought we'd only really have participation from hybrid and EV owners because they would be the ones who could save $20.30 dollars that would sort of be worth the effort of enrolling in the program and doing plugging the voice in and going through all the hoops. But we're finding we have participation from folks at all fuel economy levels, even those who could only really save, you know, less than $10. They're still willing to participate in the program.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I just was like, what does this mean? But when you, just so I understand, are there vehicles that are plug in hybrids being broken out between hybrids? Like, what how do you break that out?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: The the fuel the we use the EPA's fuel economy for a vehicle. That is that was a lesson learned when we first implemented this program. DMV doesn't traditionally keep fuel economy as one of the the data points for registration, and we know make, model, vehicle, the vehicle. We know the year it was made and maybe the color, but fuel economy wasn't. So we had to implement a VIN lookup tool to capture the fuel economy there. Is the 16 digit VIN does have the manufacturers fuel economy for a vehicle embedded in that that sequence of of numbers and characters. So, for every vehicle, we could pull what its fuel economy was and for all those who are 25 miles per gallon and up, we put into our system that they're assessed the highway use fee. So, it doesn't matter what type of vehicle it is, whether it is a really fuel efficient internal combustion engine vehicle or a low fuel efficient hybrid, you know, Hummer or something, as whatever the fuel economy is, that's what we use. So that that range down at the bottom is just showing whatever the fuel economy of the vehicle is and and how many are participating across that spectrum.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So it is okay. That makes more sense. Well, thank you. That was my help.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Wendy? A general question and a specific question. So just following up on the fuel economy, if a vehicle's fuel economy changes over time, so if it got worse, could they adjust it or would they want to adjust it? I'm not sure. I'm just thinking about people who are really specific

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: about things.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: That is one of criticisms we've heard over time. People, they can calculate, you know, they can write down the odometer when they fill up at the pump and they know they put 10 gallons in there and they can do the math and they can say, Hey, I'm not capturing what the EPA says I should be, or over time vehicles become less efficient. Our system does not allow for any modifications. It's whatever the manufacturer's original fuel economy was for a particular vehicle, that's what we use for the the life of the registration.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. And that makes sense because it would be too complicated. And so at one point, you said the cost of the system, and I think it was 200,000 a month. Is was that accurate?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Right. Okay. We we pay $86,000, for system maintenance, and then there is a per vehicle fee that we pay. It's it's $5 in change for a plug in device and $3 in change for a the telematics vehicle. So, the the number of participating vehicles changes, you know, how much we pay every month But on average, we we collect in revenue about half of of the cost of the system.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Any? This is very helpful, but if we can get a contact at Movus, they sound like somebody we should talk to to better understand what they do in in between your neck. That initial report that you mentioned that really this whole thing off, I think would be very useful for us to have and take a look at. Are there any other questions that members have at this point?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Thank you very much.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You and you very well might have questions come back from us.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And they'll probably go through Megan, and but this is very helpful. You can tell you kinda leapfrogged over Utah and Oregon. Yeah.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: I see them.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. There's a lot of the same stuff, but it it it's it's very good. Are there any other things that you'd like to say that you think as we look further into this that we should be interested or aware of?

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: Well, Chad, I think you mentioned that you were speaking to Utah because they have pivoted from their approach of the plug in device and telematics and are using the odometer capture. When we first were looking at in 2020, know, the whole mileage based user fee process kind of caught us off guard. You know, we weren't expecting. We had to sorry, the glare is really getting me here. We had to really change our end and or we had to really start researching mileage based user fee and and what all that meant. And so, you know, Utah and Oregon's program were a great launching pad for us, and we copied a lot of what Utah had done in their RFP when they were soliciting commercial account managers. And since then, they've kind of gone away from that model and are doing something different. And so I encourage you to kind of continue to look at what other approaches there are out there. You know, we when we were doing, we had that 07/01/2022 legislative directive to have our program up and running. So we focused on the tried and true approaches that had proven that they were viable solutions. And that was the the plug in device in telematics at the time. But there may be some other options, you know, still out there. The the federal pilot is is still kind of being considered. And so, you know, as as new technology gets out there, you know, this one certainly works, and it can work every single day, but it is, relatively expensive. And so, you know, what other, solutions there could be, could be helpful.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So, you know, I will say to you, Utah told us that the odometer piece where they take the picture of the mileage on the odometer, they expected that to be used more because it was, the system cost less for the driver. But they said they've been running about equal, people using the odometer versus a device in the vehicle, even though the device is more expensive. 50% of their drivers that are participating chose the device. So that and so I I thought that was quite interested, interesting in that piece. But, we certainly will follow-up with both of both states as we think about this more.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Great.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you, Scott, so much. We're very appreciative of you, being willing to talk to us.

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: My pleasure. And I'll answer any other questions that come up. Just let us know how we can help.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Alright. Thank you Thank so

[Scott Cummings (Assistant Commissioner for Finance, Virginia DMV)]: So

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: at this point, we're a little early. Would you like to give us your phone? We're gonna change gears and talk about trucks.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Fun and time. Let's oh.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Slip shift that. You go. There you go. I can't drive once in a while. Get out of the truck or

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: it doesn't

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: you can drive a truck.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Nope. Not allowed me. I said I I ride shotgun, that's what he used to say. Which is cool, so you should do some.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So I know that there has been a little bit of a rocky time getting started in So why don't you start with, well, what's going on, how we got here. And again, I think the problem has begun to rectify itself. So

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: but why don't you give a picture so people Okay. So Bill Smith, Vermont Truck and Bus Association and Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association. Yeah. These are your local trucking and companies, bus companies and buildings. For several years now, DMV had been working on their electronic online permitting for the various permits that they issued. One that has always been the tough one is what they call the single trip overweight permit. Think about this would be someone who's calling an excavator to a job site for a crane to a zone or maybe one of the manufactured They housing pieces going down the all need to get an overweight, it might be over dimension permit as well as part of that, so the DMV can make sure they're routing safely for their load. There are loads above what I'm talking about. They're called super loads or engineered loads. That's where you actually have engineers sit down and say, Okay, this thing is so heavy, so long, so wide. We need to really specify exactly where and how and when it's going to get from point A to point B. We're not talking about that. That hasn't changed at all. Those are very complicated. What we're talking about is your typical company like a crane operator or someone who will get a piece of heavy equipment to a job site and they have to get a permit from DMV to do that to make sure they're going over the right roads. You don't send someone down a dirt road. Maybe there's a construction zone that is temporary. You can't fit through it. Literally, this is what comes down to not fitting through something.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Once the point is.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Right. It's DMV's way of making sure that we don't create bigger problems by trying to do business. For a long, long time, that's been done on paper through the Department of Motor Vehicles. About, I want to say six or seven years ago, the commissioner of Illinois and a bunch of other folks said, We got to do this better. Other states are doing it. New Hampshire does it. New York does it. Every state around us kind of does this. In those states, of my members go across state lines. They're in interstate commerce and they get a permit in New Hampshire and they run through Vermont to New York State. That six years ago, you get your permit from New Hampshire and your permit from New York State, you click it online and you're good to go and they give you your route. Then you go look at Vermont and they're like, Oh, that'll be four days, five days before we get back here. The concern is that this economy that we're working in that needs to move a crane somewhere has to do it in a very tight window of time. If they can't get their permit and get it rolling here, they'll take it somewhere else and do it and they'll move somewhere else. That person that was wanting to pay them to do the work can't get the work done. That Vermont homeowner, that Vermont company can't get the job done that they need to do. That's a long winded way of saying, that's where we were. DMV has been working on this for several years now and they're working with a company called ProMiles that also does the same permitting for Maine and New Hampshire. This past fall they stood up the program, said when those terms developed the technology, we stood up our programs and now we're going to test it out there and see what we can do. I spoke to Commissioner Collier yesterday. He was going to have somebody in here double checking me by. Maybe after a conversation he said we don't need to, Bill's on board, I'm not off the reservation anymore, whatever they wanna call. The reason I came to you guys are we talked about this initially was when in early late November, early summer, the program rolled out. And people were in the city going, yeah. I get my permit. Awesome. And they were getting the permit, and it was slower than they thought it was gonna be. So there was a lot of not a lot, but there was some

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: folks that saying, What the heck?

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Right? And I can't get my permit. You told me I could get it in the best way, and I need it today. Yes. I

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: think, here, just to, like, drill down on that. Yep. Do you have numbers of how long how many people that the truckers, trucking companies is affected, and the length of delay, or the denial, like if there was an increased percentage of denial.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: The great thing here is we don't need that to drill down because

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, I I like that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I like it.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: That's Yeah. What that later

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: in the of

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: the anxiety and the waiting. Everyone's been waiting for this in the trucking industry for some time. And so when it came out, they were like, yes. And it was like, for a couple of weeks, they had some hiccups. Some people were getting permits quickly.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Like they say it came out in November. And November and December was a little bit of a rocky start. Yes. But Yes. Now they seem to have got their feet in hunger Right. And

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: So now you can get a permit between instant and thirty minutes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Wow. Great.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: I give full credit to the folks at DMV and the technical people that worked on this and Full Miles, the company that worked with the Vermont government to make this happen. Again, we're talking about the single trip overweight, over dimension permits are kind of like, that's the meat and potatoes of this stuff. That's your average company moving something that's a little bigger than you should have being hauled down the road. Is it more than APY? We've to look at it, that kind of thing. If it's more than 80,000 pounds or whatever your weight is for what you're hauling, they need enough. And for good reason, we don't want people out there trashing our roads and getting into accidents Because a great big truck coming out, he won't expect it. So that's a again, I'm sorry, Jared. Trying to be quick here with it,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: but Nope. There's rather perfectly fine. Was just a big thing. You get somebody that applied in November or December and they didn't have a good experience. They were

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: like there so many there were several years of pent up anxiety, wait you know, anticipation that if somebody had an experience that didn't work out right, they went publicistic.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: So what

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: They got the bugs

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: out. So you may have heard of it from some of this from other senators that have constituents that had issued for this. I have looked into those specifically over the last week. I have reached out to several of our board members of my truck and bus association do this every day. This is what they do. But we have also set up some meetings with our members that we're putting out, we're discuss this today. February 9, we're gonna do a Zoom meeting with our members. If anyone's got any issues with this system, we're gonna walk them through it.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, great.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Okay. It's Jeff Newton from Barrett Trucking. Barrett Trucking hauls a lot of heavy stuff for a lot of places in the state of Vermont and thank them for doing it. But there, Jeff has agreed to take some of his time and help other companies make sure that they're using the system in a way that is quick and efficient for everybody. So it's working. And if

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you have anybody that approaches you that said this-

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Send to me. Give me their number. I will call them. I will make sure they're connected with Jeff, not just in that Zoom meeting, but he's willing to call people back up and say, all right, show me what you're doing. Because everyone can see in the system how long it takes to get a permit. You can literally go into the DMV if you're in the system with your credentials. Can go on the safety. Oh, someone's going through on that road. Because they need to coordinate everything to make sure you're not running nine overweight trucks through the same place in the same three hour period. You want to make sure you've got things figured out and you can look on the system. I've seen the screenshots of it where they say, this company got a permit to go from here to here and it took twenty seven minutes. This company got it in eight minutes. It's minutes, it's not hours. It's kudos to the DMV for getting it pulled out. The longer picture view of this is that the other overweight permits that are out there, this is more of a sticking point that's not figured out yet. We're working on this, is the municipal avoid permits. This is coming in March. Every town in the state will issue overrate permits. They'll do it almost any time, but March is when you go and get your annual permits from the towns for your overweight. Who's this effect? Everyone who's hauling something that's a truck that's more than 24,000 pounds. For example, a big UPS truck loaded will be more than that. I'm not talking about huge trucks here, we're talking about your delivery trucks, your fuel trucks on every road in the state of Vermont going to our homes, bringing your heating fuel and propane. They're hauling out there on municipalities and they get permits from every pound they run every year. Typically it's a $10 fee and the town wants to know two things. Who are you and do you have insurance? They want to know who's on their roads and they want to make sure that you're insured if something goes wrong. That's fine. This program that the overweight permit electronic program at DMV has always had designed into it the capability to expand to include online permitting with the municipalities if they will participate. Now, right now, I don't think I speak on a term for DMV because their programs, they are rolling that out this spring. They're working with some towns to do some pilot programs to see if it's gonna work and how it could work effectively, both so the towns know who's on the road and who's got insurance.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So if we have spring waitlisted roads That's a slightly different issue, but Can they get into is there a hope that they could get into that?

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Well that's another type of permit. Let me touch on that one. Yes, I'll talk about that in just a second. The general town overweight permit, so if weigh more than twenty four thousand pounds, basically any road other than Main Street in most towns is a 24,000 pound road. Your ice cream delivery truck might be out for a fact, right? Your milk hauler going to your farm is way over that, Right? So they all get permits from every town they run-in every year and every town varies. It a paper permit? Do you have to mail something to me? Then the town road foreman looks at it and says, Okay, yeah, you're good. There's no road criteria. They can't really deny a permit, but you have to get one. When the rubber hits the road, if I may say that, on that is the fines if you're overweight on a municipal road are huge. I've talked to some of you over the years about it. I know that these two former representatives over here looked at this a lot over the time.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: That's fair too.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: I'm talking ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. Did you say the 80s?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Back in the eighties. Really?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You were pretty small. So

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: it's always been it's it's the fines are thousands of dollars. Yeah. You know, if you're running a £65,000 dump truck on a road that's 24,000, you're 41,000 overweight and then there's a calculation, a statute done to say how much is your fine and it's going to be thousands of dollars. Nobody wants to get the fine. Nobody else from any other state even know this exists, by the way. So it's always a problem for out of state companies delivering a different model. You don't need to get in some pilot into the weeds on that because we gotta go to the weeds of the, bud bud bud season in just a second. So the hope is that at least for Vermont companies or companies that frequently call municipal overweight permits in Vermont, that we could go to the same portal we go to for a state overweight permit and get it, and the towns could get their filing fee, and they could get the insurance information, they could get which trucking company it is, so that their constables or police officers or local sheriff that's enforcing their can know if that truck is You got a permit, and they pull it behind you and go, Oh, okay, that truck's fine, and they don't live there. And the town knows who's there. Now what's going to happen someday is that there will be towns that resist that. There will be towns that still want to go the same old way. Why? I'll say it, because secretly they don't like trucks. They just don't want to see them even though they're delivering stuff to their neighbor's house.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Or for I'm just Or, mister chair, I

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: would just know, I think it's not that people dislike trucks. Okay. I think it's that people, especially in, Downtown Woodstock, have seen pedestrians get almost run over by large vehicles, have had outsized noise issues, and the use of Jake brakes in their downtowns.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: No. Those are the reasons why they don't

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: like trucks.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: But the end result is they don't like trucks.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: think it was just Let's stay away from the blame game. Okay.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: I'm I knew I should've gone, and

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I apologize.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The the first step is that the hope that is that we could incorporate the next step is if we could incorporate the permit communities and get a more coherent system across the board. What does bother me in all of this is how if our system is different than other with local permits Yeah. How is someone that comes from Pennsylvania to make a delivery here? How would they to know?

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: They don't. I I used to make a pretty good living defending them all the way from the all the way to five cases when they would go in from, you know, Idaho's into Millington and turn around at the post office or something. That's an actual case. And their file was $8,300 Because even more important than the money actually is the time it takes because in those cases, if you're overweight, they need to have certified scale come out. Some of us got the training to appropriately weigh a truck

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: and they need to go away and that could be several hours away. So first step will be if the more times that we can get involved in this system and Let's try to voluntary. Push DMV to it will will make a more more coherent system for everybody who has to work. Right. Now is there any hope that weightlifting roads sometime in the future

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: The must be the rules.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yes. It might be incorporated so in one place you could see what's weightlifting.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Right. Well well, you can go to the to the to the AOT website right now and look up what town is in there for their mud season rules. You're temporary, the classic, the white sign with the red and black letter, something that says, posted from March 1 to June 1, this road, you kind go over this amount of weight on it. That's already there, I would say twenty five years ago that was put in place where every township wanted to get the fines for those roads and get the and force effectively enforce overweight on the muddy roads that that get harmed. Had to put it on the agency of transportation's website and do that every year. Because every It can change. Sometimes towns pay the road, they don't worry about it anymore, or sometimes towns want to put more roads in on it. Every year they have to do that. That's an administrative problem for every town as well. Again, the reason that's different than the general blanket overweight permits is because it is very specific and each town has unique road situations where they have to protect the roadways Just

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: by limiting that. It just happens to follow the sugaring, you know, is Yeah. Yeah. It's sad. It's the same time the roads are the muddiest.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Yes. And loggers try to get logging jobs done before the muddy roads they drove up on, thaw out, is also, you know, the pressure of that is also gonna never go away. But if there's a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: way at least where everyone can learn what the rules are so they can follow them. But the next step really is can we get more more coherently local permits across the road incorporated in the size of

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: At least for those who know they have to go look for them. And and that's a Vermont is one of the three states that has very strong municipal government. 47 other states. It's county government, state government, and that's almost it. I mean, yes, there are certain, you know.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The first step is if anybody in this room has anybody that says I applied and it just wasn't working, they seem to within the last two weeks have got this cleared up.

[Bill Smith (Vermont Truck & Bus Association; Vermont Retail Lumber Dealers Association)]: Well, it's a little bit more than that, but yes, yes. Certainly since December, they've DMV has gotten this dialed in in a very good way, and I have walked into that. Great. And if any if you have constituents to get I'm here almost every day. Come to see me or email me and say, I want you to talk to this company. They're having problems with the system and we will work it out, whether it's having a contact at DMV walking through it or having F Newton walking through it to see what they're having problems with and what help.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So at this point, we're gonna take a break until 10:30. Oh. It did have on the schedule the chance of predation support

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: study