Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: You're live.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So this is Senate We are continuing our testimony. We are the committee that starts the miscellaneous DMV bill. We had scheduled to 11:30. We're gonna go to 11:15. What my the goal for the committee would be is for us to run through the bill, get some testimony from DMV, and we need to hear from both and around who are the people that will be interested in the area so we can work through testimony. I'd like to put this as the priority in the next week to get this in shape, to get this moved along. There are I know people have heard from some people that might wanna add additions to it and we'll consider those. But the plan is today to get an overview and get started and figure out who we should get in here and justify what other things we might want to talk about. Thank you.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Alright. Good morning. For the record, I'm Damian Leonard from the Office of Legislative Council. Before I get started, I just wanna highlight a couple of things that are not in this draft of the bill. You'll notice it doesn't have a statement of purpose yet. I'll add that in a later draft. I also wanted to highlight that there is some updated language regarding commercial driver's licenses and electronic signatures that arrived after I had sent the bill to the editors. So that's not incorporated yet. So when I get to those sections, I'll highlight that. DMV has also asked for some changes to their rulemaking authorities, some exemptions for certain rules that they currently have to go through rulemaking for. That is not in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the bill. I I specifically ask that not to be in the bill to be drafted in an amendment form so the committee if the committee gets the will of the committee, we can add that. But in our authority as the legislature, part of the only authority we have in the rule making process is to go through that. So I can see us asking government ops what they think about that and the members of so it was I thought it was a little different than just small change.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess I'm misunderstanding. What is the exact change? Can you say it one more time?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So right now they have to go through the administrative rule making process under the Administrative Procedures Act. It takes about eight months just from the introduction of the proposed rule to the final adoption. It can be quicker, but it depends on how much public comment, how many changes, and that's after you propose the rule. So before that, you have to develop the rule. So it can take an agency up to a year, and you can imagine that for certain things, agencies may like to have more flexibility to move more quickly, to not have to go through the full notice and comment process, and to work in a more streamlined manner. We've allowed this in certain instances for various reasons. For example, with our multistate lotteries, we allow them to go outside update the rules for Mega Millions, Powerball, and Lucky for Life. Because when the rules come down from the multistate lottery organization, there's a sixty day turnaround. And, otherwise, we have to stop selling in the state.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But rare that it's rare that we do that. But it really is about legislative authority versus administrative authority, it comes under a big broader umbrella, and it will be up to the committee to decide. It's drafted and drafted in amendment form, but not in the overall draft. So we'll just have the conversation. If for my and I'll tell you my thinking. If, for example, we wanted government office to look at that I'm on that. I wouldn't I wouldn't want them to have the whole bill. Future now. But but I would like to give them the amendment to be able to put the thing that is specific to them. Yeah. Comment on. That's why I asked that it not benefit. But but but it will be up for the committee to make a decision. Thank you. Okay. Good thinking.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And along those same lines, there was language proposed by DMV relating to DUI that the chair asked to kind of treat the same way so that judiciary could

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Could comment on the amendment and not have to go through the whole bill. Right.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So okay. With that behind us, the bill in front of you, I've broken it up by broad subject area. The first section deals with non driver identification cards. The big change in this section is to provide that if you get a non driver identification card, so this is not a driver's license, just a state ID, You can't have a state driver's license at the same time. So those are the changes in there. So if you currently have a driver's license and you're getting rid of it, you have to relinquish your driver's license. And, otherwise, you can't acquire a driver's license without relinquishing your non driver IT.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And I thought we already did that. But

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: start, but and if you've got questions, we can take this up. So ask your questions.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Okay. I just wonder why, but actually maybe that's a question mark for Dan.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, they they they can put that on their list. I'm gonna I I've got them here. So after Damian goes through, we can fucking

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. And I'll I'll say I've talked to DMV about these sections, but I can't speak for the why or the background to it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And so I think I'll go through and highlight the bill, and then I'll let them answer questions about why and what they're trying to address and so forth. The second section relates to operator's licenses, and this is an area where you'll likely also wanna hear from Department of Corrections. It relates to individuals who are incarcerated for a period of six months or more, who hold an unexpired license or had a license that expired not more than three years prior, they could now apply for a replacement license.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: And then

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: as part of reentry planning, this would be basically with reentry plans. So when they get out, they have a replacement driver's license or non driver ID as appropriate so that they can basically reenter with an ID or the whatever driving privilege they've had prior to that. So there is a fair amount of language in here that you'll wanna go over and definitely hear from subject matter experts on. They have to provide proof of Vermont residence, mailing address upon release. I don't know how easy it is to provide that. This would be something where Department of Corrections can provide more information.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We should put corrections on. We listen to them. Yeah. You

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You can put

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: them back in. Got it.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. And then there's a requirement in here that DOC and DMV would coordinate to issue these licenses assuming proper documentation and so forth? And that's another question too. How easy is it for an incarcerated individual to provide the necessary documentation?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Hey. Go

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: ahead. Thanks, mister chair. On this piece, I'm wondering if we could also hear from either, like, Dismiss House or that's who they are in our area, but they're essentially, like, the group that when someone is leaving incarceration and they need a place to live, they are a transitional housing. I I if there's another non

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is there an association?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I bet there is. Yeah. And I can check on that. That's great. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Association for that in Viva Name to Megan, we'll get them to this. Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And section three does the same thing for a learner's permit, and it provides that if you had an unexpired learner's permit, or one that expired not more than two years prior, you can apply for a replacement learner's permit at no charge. And it's, again, for individuals who are exiting, the correctional system.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So it's probably detainees and, sentenced people?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There are individuals who have been incarcerated for a period of six months or more. I can't I don't know enough about our correctional system to be able to speak to exactly who this would capture.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. There are detainees who are there for much longer than six months. Okay. Thank

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you. Yeah. K.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Let's see. Okay. So section four gets us to language that is updating what the department does when it receives insufficient funds. So currently, the law provides that whenever a check is not honored by the bank, the commissioner sends written notice and can temporarily suspend the license or registration that the check was used to pay for. This would add electronic funds transfer, including a credit or debit charge. And so if you, for example, you process an electronic funds transfer, but by the time it processes at your bank, there are insufficient funds in the account or with a creditor debit charge if you dispute it or do a charge back and the department doesn't get paid. This would allow them to suspend the license or registration temporarily until payment is made. And so it it takes our existing law for checks and just extends it to the electronic payments. Again, I would defer to them to talk about how this works in their system and the extent to which they're seeing this.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So on page six, so when you it says you we took out the part that says presenting the check. The check is not immediately made good. So then it it did that just are you just rewording that, or is that actually meaning something different with the new line? I guess I'm not understanding Yeah. So different if you if you're presenting a check that you know is bad, that's illegal is my understanding. But this situation for electronic payments, yeah, I think

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: doing is I'm replacing presenting the check, and if the check is not immediately made good with shall send a written notice of nonpayment to the person who provided insufficient funds and if the required amount amounts are not immediately paid

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So it's

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: commissioner shall suspend the license.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The other question there is you may wanna look at the word immediately.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So that's tracking the existing law, but immediately does mean, like, right now. And the question is, do you wanna set, like, a couple of days or something like that, like forty eight hours, seventy two? I mean, these are

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I I would say to you, and I'll just give you the example. He brought this up to me. I deposited a rent check. Mhmm. The repress my representative in the is my tenant. And she brought her rent check-in, and I deposited the rent check electronically with my phone last Friday. It was I don't know what time of day Are the phones available yet? They came available this morning.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And and and that the the one piece I have about this is if somebody's trying to do the right thing and they're trying to register and pay, there are a ton of people that are out there that don't even try to register their cars now. And if somebody is caught between a bank that is moving slowly and the and the agency and I find a little buffer, I'm saying this for DMV to hear, I don't want to treat somebody that's trying to do the right thing. Wanna be a yeah. A little a little because I that that check that Damien did did hit the bank this morning. And I and you saw me deposit it last Friday. I did.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I did. So

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So I'm just putting a circle on that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm opposed to talking about this, but but sometimes when they say electronic, they aren't always fast as

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Alright. So in section five, there's a couple of things going on here. This is the license plate section. So last year, you'll remember there was a proposal to go down to one plate. This would repeat that proposal. And so that proposal is in here. It requires the plate to be securely attached to the rear of the vehicle and takes out references to two plates. It also adds in new language. So currently, we require that number plates shall be kept unobscured, and that the numbers and letters shall be plainly legible at all times. This adds language providing that the numerals and letters on the plate shall not be colored, tinted, or changed in any manner from their appearance at the time it was issued, and the plate shall not be covered in any material or substance that changes or tints the color of the plate or the numerals and letters on the plate.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Sure. Go ahead.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Did you where did you get this language? I wonder if this would cover all the instances that people would cover their place to avoid license plate reviews.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So good question. I took the language based on suggested language from the department with some modifications that I made to it as I drafted. But this is not to my knowledge based on another stage, but the department may seeing heads shaking. I'm interested

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: things that use a lot of automatic rep and law enforcement like New York have kind of tried to deal with this because you see a lot of efforts to avoid paying tolls like bridge tolls, which could be quite expensive in New York. They're the incentive to cover your plate that looks normal. Sometimes it's just clear, but it's kind of like these things you have in your computer where you just like the way the camera gets it, it can't actually see it. Right out of there. So I would want to be more specific if it's need be on that.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. The opposite end of the question is if I had dirt or snow, like and I'm not trying to obscure.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Didn't put the dirt

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I didn't put the dirt snow on the tank.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Plastic. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Exactly. But I feel like the wording kinda says by any material or substance that changes or tends

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: to Right. So one of the one of the potential things that you could say is shall not be intentionally. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then I would rewrite the whole subsection there. The yeah. And that's I would defer to to the department, but that's something we can write rewrite in there.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: You had

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Briefly, I can tell you that New York, in New York, if if you unintentionally say you're parked somewhere and and there's a snowstorm in your town, your roof plate's covered up. It's your responsibility to explain it. Your your car has to be perfect up, so you might run against that here. Yeah. And I know that for a fact.

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

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It's like I have. Thank thank you for the best thing.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah. I do.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. So are you saying that when my road's muddy in the spring and Joan's in her dress clothes, and she drives down the road and somebody stops her and says,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: a car with a foot of snow on it. You wanna get your windshield cleaned up and all that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: However Yeah. But but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most of Colchester's blacktop. I live on a I live on a dirt road. And the first thing she said to me when she moved from Michigan is, I gotta get rid of this Volkswagen and get something that's got more ground clearance because we can't get down this road. Sorry. If she gets a ticket, I'm in trouble.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Got a couple notes on there for the next time, Drew. Other changes in here are just either cross references or just for technical changes. So changing the reference date to number plates, that sort of thing, just to be clear. The next section in here, next two sections actually relate to what do they call them? Stuckages in smugglers' knots. That's quite what you're saying.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah. Yeah. Tractor trailers.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. Tractor trailers, large trucks that try to go up through Smuggler's Knobs, which honestly, in a large SUV is challenging.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It was signage. I mean,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: there He has a signage.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Of signage. Right? Yeah. No. It's like they really want to do it. I think they see it as a challenge.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: There's care.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The currently, the statute provides that the employer of an operator who is operating a vehicle in the scope of employment and violates the section the the pro prohibition on driving through the notch or the operator of a vehicle who's operating it for personal purposes and goes through smugglers notch is subject to a civil penalty of a thousand dollars, or if the violation results in substantially impeding the flow of traffic on the road there, I. A. $2,000, and then doubling that if there's a second or subsequent conviction within a three year period, this would increase those penalties to 10,020 thousand dollars.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So we don't have the other language. We just have the increase.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The increase is in here. Yeah. So the what it does is it that section prevents the road to be closed seasonally during the snow season. It prohibits the operation of box trucks in excess of 40 feet and then tractor trailers through the notch or vehicles in excess of 40 feet and then tractor trailers, have trailers of 45 feet, so you can imagine. And then it includes these penalties, and then subsection c basically requires the agency to install signage warning people that they will not be able

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: to get through. So where's the section that had the first instant fees? We just add the second fees, but it doesn't say it for a second violation. Or am just missing it?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So if you're looking on page nine, on line 16 is the civil penalty of $10,000. Line 18 is the penalty of well, proposed penalty of $20,000 for impeding the flow. And then following that, it says for a second or subsequent conviction.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So you've said a thousand and 2,000, and then

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: you It's current. And then it would increase that to 10,000 or 20,000. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I thought you were saying this this 10,000 to the second. So it'll be 20,000 and 40,000 for the subsequent.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. So 20,000 if you have a stockage, then if you do that twice in a three year period, your next penalty would be $40,000.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: What's go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I have a related question, but I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: think there'll be some discussion

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, in think this is a good idea. So my just related suggestion is that we have a problem with trucks running into covered bridges, historic covered so I'd like to put something in there to discourage that. Mr. Chair, go ahead. We do have Butch Shaw, Representative Shaw in the House had really investigated this issue for many years and we passed a bill within the T bill four years ago that really increased that penalty for covered bridges. Was called like the historic. Okay, go ahead. Did like a whole bunch of work on it. But they're still doing it though, so that's So Yeah, I guess if we're gonna do something I would look at.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: They're not

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: doing it because the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: penalty is too low. But I don't think this will have any impact. Bridges or because they're not paying. Thousand dollars, I could afford that. I'll just give it anyway. They just don't know what it does.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Right. But this will get their employers to tell them.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah, but it's just gonna there's enough employers. There's enough independent contractors. I don't know if we got evidence of subsequent packages.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Last year, it was cut from length. The average has been about 9 a year, and we had one. And so the chicanes are working.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I have to admit, this is my town in my backyard. And there are a few other things that the agencies might have to consider. The gates they close, it's been a number of years since I sat at this table and and finally got them to cook gates up. Those gates need replacing. There is there's a a number of things around this. I will get some pressure because every time a truck gets stuck, it's my fire department that gets called. It's my rescue squad that if there's anything in the notch. And so they're I'm happy that they brought this up. I've thought that the fine has been too low for a very long time, but I will hear from my local because they they always get the call first.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And we did when we changed the fees before to where they are now, that they were lower before, if I remember correctly. But we I thought we also made it that the responders could bill the owner for all costs. And I don't know if that ever happened, and they just

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Well, I think remember.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think we're gonna we'll we'll have a conversation about all of that.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But down to the.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: As efficiently as we can because but it is I do constantly hear from because if anybody gets stuck, there's a lot of construction people in my town that are in store working, and if it's late in the afternoon and they have to drive around, We

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: all hear it. Okay. Thank you. So the next part of this is it does add that the individual so what happens here is the individual, if it's a truck owned by a company and their driver gets stuck, the individual operating the vehicle doesn't actually pay the penalty. Their employer pays it. This would provide that the individual who operates the vehicle, whether it's personal vehicle or a vehicle owned by their employer, would be guilty of a moving violation and be assessed points. Can we put points on other things license, shouldn't you think?

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I mean, you can assess points. It's up to the other state whether what they do with that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You know?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Are they reciprocal? Yeah. We're not. Oh.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So, Matt Russo, deputy commissioner for the record.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: They're not reciprocal. Suspensions are. So if

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: you can get enough points here to be suspended, your state would be notified. They would suspend you as well. But states there are points do not cross state lines.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So even if they got enough points suspended in Vermont because I think, like, other states have different all point systems. So, like Mhmm. For here, if you have 12 points suspended, you might need to get 20 there. So that then it just doesn't really it's only if we just suspended it. Correct. It was only if we suspended Vermont's license. We would never get to the point where we can suspend another state.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: could depend. I mean, if they had enough infractions or they had enough points that they were suspended here even if they're not gonna buy a New York license. We can we

[Matt Russo, Deputy Commissioner, Vermont DMV]: can or didn't pay? Or you can pay?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So if you accumulate 10 points in a two year period, the commissioner can initiate suspension proceedings on the statute. License on another state. Yes. Yeah. So you can suspend the the privilege of operating within Vermont or the license to operate.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Right.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And so and then the the actual procedure for doing that, it so at 10 points, it's a ten day suspension, 15 points is thirty day, Twenty points is ninety days, and that increases by thirty days for each additional five points beyond that. So it's the suspensions are not particularly long initially, but two two stockages in a two year period, and you could have a suspension proceeding started at

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Vermont. So I think.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. And it specifically does say in that statute that it's not just an operator, it's also the privilege of an unlicensed individual or nonresident to operate a vehicle in Vermont. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Alright. And so this would assess five points for that violation, which is pretty steep. It's not the highest points assessment, but it is is up there.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You know what the highest point?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There is I know it's eight points for 30 miles an hour over and above the speed limit. And I think there are a couple that are 10 points, and I can't remember what they are off the top of my head. Like, gross necklace rings or something. Yeah. Draping in the. That is that's a little lower. But

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But, no. It that's done in tears because if you're going so much over, it's one thing. But if you're going I can't remember what but and then it really

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: And then maybe for some my only sang,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it's deeper too as well. Yeah. So 10 points is negligent operation, operation without the owner's consent, failure to stop with when involved in a crash, and attempting to elude a police officer. And then you get if you're speeding 30 miles an hour over and and above the speed limit, you can be assessed 10 points instead of just the eight if you result in a crash that was the fault of the speeder. And then but, yeah, their five points is 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, failure to yield to emergency vehicles, illegally passing a school bus, texting in a work or school zone for a second or subsequent offense, junior operator using a portable electronic device in a work zone or school zone, second and subsequent, and then use of a portable electronic device, second and subsequent. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: In Colorado, we something. Mid year, we take the

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No. No.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Colorado, start what?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Here, we we assessed on. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's when you run out of. That's interesting. Well, if you know, this some of this does bring up the safety issue that we've started to look into when we bring up cell phone use. It would be interesting to see how many people have been pulled over and how many ticketed for use cell phones in the end device.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And it sounded as if it was just for people who were having a a learning permit.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's there it's both learner's permit and operators.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it's junior operators, regular drivers, and it's second and subsequent for all of them, though. So your first offense does not get you the five points. It's the second one.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And the second one within a certain period of time or at all?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It says Three. Sorry. I gotta go back to the statue now. So it says yeah. It's just second and subsequent.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Your first offense for those those three is four points. So those two would get you almost a license suspension.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How much is speeding in a school zone?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Mean, there's a chart. Yeah. There is a schedule on the statute. It's it's lengthy. I don't know the speeding in a school zone. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We can go back. That. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Perhaps we could ask. I feel like I thought at what point DMV had provided us some kind of, like, here's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: A little booklet.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. There was, like, a chart we got

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a few years ago. I thought that would be awesome.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Review on the same thing, I think, like,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: four or five years ago.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Sorry about Yeah. Know, if you

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: make the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that would yeah. I think that would be interesting for all of us.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. I don't see Lisa

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: may give us to this.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. I don't see a separate points assessment for speeding in a school zone. It's just the the speeding assessments. Although, I think your fine goes up if you're speeding in a school zone or construction zone.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: We'd be So but

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: yeah. Let's continue with this. If if you find put if you find the sheet, that would be helpful. Mhmm.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Alright. So after this, we're moving on to section eight where we started on salvage titles, and this is the electronic signature requirement that I mentioned before. So what this section is doing is and there are going to be some changes to this. So I'm just to highlight what this is doing is enabling the use of electronic signature on certain documents when you have a totaled vehicle and titles being transferred to the insurance company after they pay the claim on it, and then they can auction it or sell it for parts or

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Crush it for scrap, whatever at that point. But there are updates to the language that I received yesterday evening from DMV's council. So I'll incorporate those and then go through it more closely next time.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Can I

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: just ask, these aren't bonded titles? These are just

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No. This is for the this is for the transfer of title, basically, from the owner to the insurance company after they've totaled out the vehicle. Yeah. So it's it's a vehicle that's a total loss. And there is a separate procedure already in the statute if they can't obtain a certificate of title from the owner that allows them to attest to certain things after a period of time trying to get the title with DMV. This is just supporting electronic documents. My understanding is that most states have some sort of electronic signature language available, and we are among the remainder of states that are considering it. But then there are also concerns about ensuring security here so you don't have a fraudulent transfer.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And would this work the other way to your or maybe you don't need the same kind of signature, but if you're gonna salvage vehicle and you wanna get a clean budget like it was

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: repaired. That's a that's a little different. This is specifically focused on transferring title to the insurer. Yeah. So that they can get a salvage title. I have some bills on the wall. You can set up a salvage title. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Had a question for my constituent.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep. Well, I think there are a number of questions. We changed the law around that. I think just it's kinda hard to juggle all that issues that everybody's bringing up to us and get it taken up.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the next two sections, nine and ten, relate to duplicate titles. So if your certificate of title is lost, stolen, mutilated, or destroyed, or becomes illegible, either you as the owner, the first lienholder, if you have a bank loan on your vehicle, or your legal representative can go to the commissioner and request duplicate title. The language that's being added would allow them to hand the title to you if you do this at a DMV location. Currently, the statute provides that it has to be mailed. So you go to the DMV, you do all the paperwork, and then you have to wait for the certificate to arrive in the mail. And so section nine does this for motor vehicles. Section 10 does this for, I believe, it's ATVs. Let me just make sure that that's correct. Sorry. I haven't learned this one in and out yet. Yeah. Vessels, snowmobiles, and ATVs. Yeah. So

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: alright.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Section 11 relates to title appeals. This is just a technical correction. Currently, says Superior Court for Washington County, and this is just making that a little bit more clear. So it's civil division of the Washington unit of the Superior Court.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So you're not filing it in criminal court here for your appeal on your title complaint. That brings us to abandoned motor vehicles in section 12, which is, again, another technical correction for clarity here. Currently, the sentence provides that no certificate of title is required for a vehicle owned by a manufacturer or dealer and held for sale even though instantly moved on the highway or used for purposes of testing or demonstration or used by an educational institution for driver training purposes or a vehicle used by a manufacturer solely for testing, and this just breaks them out into some paragraphs so you can kinda see what each one is.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So this doesn't change that? It just says

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It doesn't change that. We're just

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's a very long run out sentence.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. This was requested by the DMV's counsel who gets into the weeds with these statutes much more frequently than I do and finds these things that are left over from the bad old days when everything was a long run on sentence or a single paragraph with hundreds of small points in there. So this was a request like, can you just break this out so that it's more clear once people are going through it? That's all that is. The next one, though, is a substantive change. This is section 13. This is the fees for towing from public property. This currently, when you tow an abandoned motor vehicle from public property, DMV pays a fee of up to $125 to the towing company. This would allow the fee to also be paid to a state agency upon the state agency showing proof that they have paid the towing company already and they're seeking reimbursement. So and I'll let DMV talk to the specifics of why they're requesting this, and they they can explain the current situation and and why they're requesting this change be made. But that would essentially be a transfer between state agencies, so you'd just be moving money around on the state's books. And that brings us to section 14, the diesel fuel tax. This is let's see. There's some renumbering we're doing in here, just breaking out subsections, so that is not a substantive change there. And what we've done is and we've changed one cross reference to reflect the renumbering, and that's to try to reflect that sub sections b one and b two on page 15 relate to how what the tax is due on and how how you're paying it. And then subsection c provides information about how they're paid. Subsection d provides information on the one gallon 1¢ per gallon fee that goes to petroleum cleanup funds. And before, they were all subdivisions to the same subsection. So, again, we're just breaking things out to try and make it more clear. This was also requested by my counterpart at DMV. So this is just reorganization Just technical reorganization for clarity. The purchase and use tax changes beginning on section 15 have a mix of substantive and technical changes. The first are clarifications on what purchase price means for on the bottom of page 16 here in four a, purchase price for a vehicle that's purchased outright. And then moving on to page 17, line five subdivision b, purchase price for a leased vehicle. Both of them are subject to purchase and use tax. And also clarifying things like cash consideration, cash payment, just to make it more legible to an average reader who didn't go to law school or spend a lot of time with statutes. In subdivision five, going over to page 18, we are adding in language to track the changes we made last year, saying that the commissioner can develop a process to determine the value of vehicles that do not have a clean trade in value and JV power values. You'll remember we added this language last year in another portion, and this is just technical change to make it line up. I also added in a technical change there updating the reference to a guard unit to a member of the National Guard.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We will wanna know from the commissioner what they've done.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. The there are a couple other substantive changes down here, new definitions beginning at the bottom of that page, defining a month as thirty days, defining shipping weight, as the stock weight of a vehicle without the addition of optional equipment, passengers or cargo, and including standard standard vehicle fluids such as engine oil and coolant, but not the weight of fuel. So this will affect which vehicles are subject to purchase and use status. And so that's something where we'll need Logan to look at this more closely as well, but you'll wanna hear from the department on why they're making that change. We're defining trailer to include semi trailer and fifth wheel trailers and defining the year to mean a period of three hundred and sixty five days. So this is one of the important things with the month and year is it's not a calendar month or calendar year. It's a period of thirty days or three hundred and sixty five days. So it could start, you know, January 30 to January 29, the following year. Alright. And the tax imposed sections, we're updating the vehicle weighing to a vehicle with a shipping weight, and adding truck trailers to the tax imposed. So, again, this will have an impact on what, the purchase and use tax is imposed on, and we're making those changes in a, it's on vehicles purchase outright. In b, it is vehicles that are subject to a lease.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And Is something the Trucking Bus Association would be interested in?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Likely. Yeah. Trailers are not.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Trailers. Trailers are now subject to purchase and and use. So what

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So it's gonna know what today

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Today, they're not expressly included in the language.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Are they charged?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That is a good question. I'm not sure off the top of my head. Do you guys know if trailers are charged purchase and use now, or are they subject to sales? They are purchased and used. Okay. So this is clarifying that? Yes. Yep. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But but practice, nothing's changed. Nothing.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think that's the intent is that this won't change the practice. It'll clarify the statute. K. But, again, it'd be good to hear from the relevant associations Yeah. Dealers probably, as well as Logan who can give you a financial review of this. And g is the tax on titling car in the state. So when you buy it in, say, New Hampshire and then you title it in Vermont, this imposes this use tax side of the purchase and use

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: section. K. Sixteen sixteen.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're almost there.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I hope you left

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: the best. Oh, I did. Operation of snowmobiles section 17 or snow machines.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Ski doo.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Ski doo. Sled in.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Anyway,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I won't expose how much of a flatlander I am right now.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We we ought to do that. It's pretty obvious.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But, anyway so this addresses the penalties for operating a snowmobile that's not registered in the state or doesn't have the appropriate trail sticker on it. Currently, it's a penalty of a $135 for each violation. This would increase it to a penalty of 450 for a first offense and 500 for a second or subsequent offense within a three year period.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Does the basket this money?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: This money, I believe, goes to the state. I don't believe it goes to Bass, but

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I can quickly jump in on that.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Yeah. Andrew Collier, I'm gonna make sure DMV. So this was a Bass Bass reached out to us. This is their initiative. They found that. Sorry for dropping the head either too. But the trail maintenance sticker is less than the fine, and they're finding people are willing to risk getting a fine then get it registered. So this is directly this is the language directly from them.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So we wanna have vast in. Go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: On this point, I'm not seeing anything that well, I just have questions about and maybe it's for the for the DMV later. But I also understand we changed our reciprocal relationship between New Hampshire with some of that. Like, I it used to be that you could go to New Hampshire if you had a Vermont pass, and you could go to Vermont if you had a New Hampshire pass, and we've ended that. So it's my understand I don't know.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: But Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Maybe you haven't. Okay.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Sorry.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But may maybe we'll just have that.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Something. Ask me.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: No. Because I had

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: to still pay

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: for the basket, but

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: you can show your Hampshire registration.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. You might be thinking about the options that I think New Hampshire might have done.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, they don't better. Yeah. I had some constituents reach out to me on the border about this. So I maybe I'll just have that. We'll talk to that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Go ahead ask you. Yeah. They'll have all this. Yeah.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So in the statute, there are areas along the border that are exempt from requiring a a TMA sticker.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But then that you're supposed to once you get three miles into the state or not on one of these corridors where there's a special exception, there's supposed to be a signage that says Vermont TMA required at beyond this point. And then beyond that point, so that that may be some of the confusion there. And then there are so for example, up in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Essex County, there's an 18 mile corridor to and from New Hampshire between Beecher Falls and Canaan, Vermont or to and from the New Hampshire border with Beecher Falls and the town of Canaan there. There's a corridor there. There's another one on the so called Keyhole Trail that runs from US customs at Beecher Falls to Pittsburgh, New Hampshire to join up with the trail that goes down to Canaan and West Stewartstown. So

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Maybe someone's getting off the trails then as well. Yeah.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And then so there there are a bunch of or there are a bunch. There are five of these or four of these corridors and then authorization for the commissioner to temporarily open up other corridors for special events. But then, otherwise, it's a blanket three mile requirement. So Sorry about that. Yeah. And then VALST can provide you with a lot more information. That's just what the statute says. As we all addressed earlier, I'm a flatlander, and I don't know anything about this.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So You said it first.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: I did. We did agree.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That doesn't mean I'm not open to learning. So I I would like to learn.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But Well, we're trying to teach you sometimes. We have a committee. You know what they'll say? We need one.

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

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: We need to take this 100% there. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We need take this for probably

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Pretty soon then too while there's still snow.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. We got a few weeks.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Was a. Pick a long Florida.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. That's okay. Alright.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Section 18. So this is another one that is going to be there's some updated language that I'm working on with Evangeline, the general counsel from DMV. But what this would do is it would waive the requirement for a commercial driver's license during a weather emergency, and the emergency may change

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: there.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It may be an emergency declared by the governor rather than a weather emergency declared by the district administrator. We're we're working working around on the language here trying to figure out the details. But, basically, what this would allow is that if the emergency is declared, state and local employees who don't have a CDL would be permitted to operate vehicles, heavy vehicles without being required to have that CDL. So this would allow them to do things like relocate a truck out of the garage, the central garage as it's flooding, while employees who are skilled operators can be actually out on the roads. You you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: may wanna take a truck and get it out of a flood zone. Crazy.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We might we might.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Maybe we should help the whole central drugs out

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: of it. But yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, I think we're are are we thinking about that? But you're supposed to come up with money. Yeah. Yeah. You're the one.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I saw the sign for it the last time I went up that road on the the Turnpike up there. Turnpike. Yeah. There's a sign. Yeah. There's a sign where the the pull off is. It looks like

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a nice come in in this lifetime.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. 26,000 pounds. What is a snowmobile?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So this this is a this is a heavy truck. I don't know how heavy a a snowplow is, but

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: It's over that.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I'm guessing that they clear that. I'm seeing heads nodding. Okay. But, yeah, this is I mean, this is a semi trailer sized vehicle and off.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's not the first time we did

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Somebody without a CDL would get in a truck.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's not the only thing we have. Right. And there there are other exceptions such as for farm vehicles, fire trucks, things like that. So If you're delivering agricultural products within a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: 150 miles of your home base, you can do that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So You don't need a CDL?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You don't need a CDL.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So if they're moving that drug and they don't have a CDL, this says they still have to have a medical card? Yep. Unless the municipality or state agency has been granted an exemption from that requirement. Which we offer? US DOT.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So yeah. Not required as far as drug testing?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Good question. I I gotta confirm that. This is part of what Evangeline and I are working on, is the details around the requirements here. And I need to I need to brush up on what is required for the medical care. Yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll admit I'm not up to date on all the CDL requirements. They're not fresh in my head at the moment. So Which direction? Transportation. That'd be

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: fine. I won't pay. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. If you pay At least another. Yeah. Well, I I train you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: to be honest, if I wanna deliver hay off the farm I know you I can go up to a 150 miles.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, so you don't need one. It's what

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I Right. I mean, it's Just turn

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: around with a truck full of hay. I

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: think so.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Mhmm.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Section Yeah. Go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Is this is this I know you do solve the effective dates, but I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I have

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: one more section, actually.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, no. That's my apologies.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's okay. Section 19 is so the first sentence there on line eight is just taking the language of the fee provisions here. This is what's required when you apply for a CDL or a commercial learner's permit. The first sentence, I'm just making it consistent with the other paragraphs here because it says the application shall include the following. So the applicable fee instead of just listing what the fees are, and then the substantive change is adding a one year fee for nondomicile commercial driver's licenses. So these are folks that are not residents of Raman. They may be here on a work permit or other visa that allows them to work in The United States, and this is creating a one year fee for those nondomiciled licenses that is $40. As you would like to you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: got nondomiciled and on March 9. Non Vermont.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. Yep. So this this could include both the nondomiciled CDLs that are creating a lot of controversy at the federal level right now where they're changing the requirements if you're not a US citizen. It can also include folks who are just not Vermont residents, not domicile here. And DMV can talk about this more. And but this is one small change right now because the federal requirements are currently on hold while there's some litigation going on around that. The effective date right now is just 07/01/2026. That can, of course, change. As I mentioned, I'll be making some updates, and then I think there's discussion about what else might go on the bill and so forth. I know I've been working on various projects for some of you about potential language and so forth, but that's up to all of you to discuss.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, mister chair. On that point, I think it's mainly a question for you, is how do you want us to approach if we have I have two bills on the wall that I'd like us to consider the DMV bill, the inspections bill and then the cold. I know our legislative council doesn't necessarily think it's a DMV miscellaneous thing, but I think we have miscellaneous in there. And it's a cold water flotation device bill, so I'd like to see if we could consider those two. And then I have an amendment that's I don't know where it is in drafting, but around the mini trucks.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: K trucks.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: K trucks. And that's not a bill. So what would your process that you'd like us to

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I asked Megan to schedule the inspection next week. Okay. The other two I hadn't wheeled. Yeah. But that one we will do. I think the first thing I was thinking is we take up the inspection issue next week. Right. We hear from DMV's got ten minutes to get started. I think we're starting with a list for other other, you know, VAST and all these groups to come in. We'll get them scheduled, and then the other tuitions will work in. But I have suggested to her that we start right up on Tuesday. So we'll work them in. And then there is there are I tell you that I haven't had a chance to read it, and this is for you, commissioner, too. The lobbyist for the car manufacturer in Milton 0. They have some language Mhmm. That tracks what California did because I know, again, we haven't had a chance to sit down. Yep. It's my plan to put that on the table because we had some interest in hearing about that last year. But we will get it all worked out. We'll get along the scheduling.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So should we be thinking that next week is the time that we'll start to take testimony on those sections for

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, I plan on taking testimony next on the inspection issue. I thought we'd move into the other issues on here and we'll see what the end of the week looks like.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm to build the schedule around next week being anything that would be considered in this, and we won't get it done next week, so it'll spill into the week after. But we'd definitely take those issues off.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Because I've got them booked, so I'll tell them that worked again.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep. And you wanna get those names all to Megan so we can we can work them into the schedule and get them. Good

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: morning. Thank you, chair. Good morning, Betty. Andrew Collier, the administration of DMV. I know I'm short on time, so I guess I'll ask.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'm sorry that, you know Oh, yeah. And that's what this is gonna slip into next week. Yeah, absolutely. But for right now, if you could do a couple of highlights, and we get who are the people that we should have in, you know, the for example, the towing piece, but other places in state government are gonna you know? Yep. And so if we could just it would be helpful for us to start the schedule, and you'll be in first thing to come, actually, to the pivots on each section, just the way that Davian just did. Absolutely. The first one comes to

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: mind, super on towing versus the the van vehicles. Chris Eric from

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: the agency of transportation. K. He's the lead over there.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Reference Max Tags. I know you you had mentioned the Vermont Trucking Boss. I would also say Vermont Automobile Auto Dealer Association or Beta. The Salvage Title reference Copart. Yep. Auction House would be the one. I know we touched on Vest.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Who should should talk about the salvage shed? There's a much broader issue on the salvage shed than just what is in here. And it might be good for us to I've had some constituents. There's a bill that's on the wall. I know that some changes have been happened within that area. We might wanna brush up on Okay.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: That, trying to think. Reference the wind we're grabbing the bill, that was Copart themselves had reached out to us and worked with them. The the greater salvage trying

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: to think

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: We can can go back. I ahead.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Added constituent that bought a car that it wasn't available what the title was, and they feel like they they got a vehicle that had been totaled and then brought back and I don't get all the details, but I've had a number of people over the summer, I had five or six people from around the state get ahold of me saying they felt like the system wasn't working.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Yep. I think lieutenant Jeremy sergeant sergeant. Thank you. From DMV and then also lieutenant Dan Merchant. Dan will also kinda copy over into when we talk about inspections as well.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Maybe are you are you talking about bonded? Like, they should get a bonded title. They can't get a clean title. Is that right? Right? Isn't that normally what

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I suggest?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Those are two separate things.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Solid process and big build

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: process is separate from between a bonded test.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, it's completely separate.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I mean, there are times when they

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: they do get a bonded title at the same time.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So it might be good for us to understand what the difference is between a bonded title and Yeah. So we can but I've had enough some people that bought vehicles that felt like they've been taken. Yeah. So I and I I I don't understand the details of all of this, and, you know, so if if we could if we could get up to speed on that.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: And then Matt Russo would be the one for that readout. I know we touched on corrections. Nancy Prescoff referenced corrections. The IDs would be our subject matter expert on that.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Exactly. And this is

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: a great question. Did that come to your attention?

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: So we currently have we currently do non or just IDs, photo IDs for people coming out of corrections if they need them. We do approximately 500. It's a very small piece. We started having an internal discussion as we're working through with the new modernization on things that we can change. And this this subject came up of why are we giving them an ID just to have them come in to get back to their highest level if they if it's still valid. So this is where this discussion is coming. Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So So it was internal to your Yes. Conversation. Okay.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: And we have talked to corrections. They're they're excited and anything that we can do to Yeah.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Help

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: people get back on their feet Yeah. Coming up. Great.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: And then

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: the sway of place, I just wanted

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: to touch quickly on that. We should have law enforcement in on that. And my first question comes up because this is a is this coming from across the board, and is law enforcement going to agree with DMV? So

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: possibly. I guess it depends who you speak with in law enforcement. I think as the committee knows, I'm still a certified law enforcement officer. I've I see this just as administrator. We have not enforced this law since hurricane I read. I know I mentioned that last year. There's last year, we pulled the numbers. I think there was just shy of 190 tickets written on this. The majority were just from one town in Southern Vermont. So it's not a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: what's it? Windham Town?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I don't know. I'm fresh.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: I think it starts with a d

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: for the town. Oh, okay. But

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: and then The next year's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: There there there is a tea town in Windham Cabinet.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It is, but they don't. So there is stick or they have a share.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I think it's on the

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: other other side of the Green Mountains there.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So that's probably Bennington County.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Dobre.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Oh, no. Dobre. Okay. Alright. Alright. Alright. Would make sense because of the

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: tourists. So there there is that piece. Uh-huh. We have been speaking with the treasurer about the the Vermont Green, and I wanna be very clear. DMV and administration is supporting Vermont Green. So when we talk

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: about that piece We may wanna take the whole issue of Vermont Green off with in conjunction with this Yes. Because of I'm not clear. I've we've heard that there may be a proposal from from DMV, specifically, but the administration brought her about this. Yep. I'm not sure what would raise. I'd like to see them be able to raise money. For Armstrong was very successful in people out there selling plates to allow that to have so I'm not really clear what the best way to do that.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Absolutely. And I know we're gonna speak a lot on this, and and that was our take both from the DMV side and and the administration is, let's take DMV out of the game of special planes, except for what we already had. And the and I have numbers there, and it's

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: we don't do a lot.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: But it gives organizations, all organizations, whether or not it's nursing nurses, UVM, Vermont Green, anyone, the whole front real estate of a license plate. It gets us out of managing trying to manage that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And So so we don't wanna have the overall discussion about it. It also came up in here about are we favoring one single team versus other teams in the state and and so in conjunction with this, how do we have an overall discussion about that? If you could help us think about that. This may be a vehicle for that. The bill may be a vehicle for that, but how do we have an overall discussion to put this committee to make a decision and better understand what the options are? Absolutely. I I think, you know, as you said, first off, I

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: think having law enforcement at the table, having, organizations

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that would benefit from if they were able to sell their own license plates and they generate their own revenue. You wanna be ready to have a specific conversation about that bill, what your proposal might be, and all of that sometime in the context. May be later next week, that may be, but I'd like to be able to have a congress so this committee makes the decision about all of that issue and makes a decision on what vehicle makes the most sense for us to send this through. I do realize that if it's a miscellaneous DMV bill, it's probably gonna end up going through in the end and won't there's no chance of it getting waylaid sometimes. An individual bill that can happen, but there's a lot of support for that. Think we just wanna have all of out on the table.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Absolutely. Understood on that. And then just the lesser piece within that section, that's section five, is the tinting of Vermont license plates. That's a big one. I just wanna make the committee aware. That's the kind of loophole in in statue, and it's kinda taking off right now here in Vermont, and that's a just a I don't want that to be drowned out by also the conversation where because it's part of the five o Section5511 front license plate, but the tinting of the license plate is something we're seeing, and we're just seeing avenue to enforce. Go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So when you say tinting, that's what senator Perch was talking about, where there's something that doesn't necessarily

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: So people

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: not obvious, but it does obscure it.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: No. This is the obvious. So this is the people are going to local businesses that do tinting and putting covering it. So the numbers are legible, but it they're making it pink, purple.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, just for fun? Not for the

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Not for

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: tolling or something?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I saw it quite a bit of data that had all the green part. They had they had all black Mac card custom, and then they blacked out all the green part. And then those so the those white letters were still there, but all you can see were the light white letters.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Yeah. And that's the loophole is we've tried looking with the statute to see but it doesn't specifically say anything about the how we furnish the license plate, not having that changed,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: or or the color of the license plate.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So if you can help Megan put together a piece that have discussion about all of those issues, I'm sorry to tell you it's time to leave the room. Least today, and we'll have you back.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Thank you.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: really cool morning. And if you could, the quicker you can get something to have about all that discussion. And if Megan has any trouble, we now have a pretty big list that we're gonna and we will as a warning, we will wanna take up the inspection issue. And that somewhat relates to the dissections in here where you wanna be let out from going in from a hell car. Yes. It's all.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: It is. We're excited to have that conversation. If you don't have a program, you know what?

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: brings up that whole subject.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I see some some synergy between those.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Patrick Pattern.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Thank you all.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Thank you. What?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You ever hear the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: bass kid like you? I know.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I'm working on it.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The radio. Oh,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I will tell the the committee before we get totally going here with Patrick and we've run out of time, which I want you ready with your questions tomorrow. We we do have the daughter of one of the members on the committee. If you have any of your recent questions Oh. She's gonna

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: be on Zoom. Oh.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: She said she could do Zoom.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: She is coming here?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: She's she knows how much it means.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: To her. And and, Elle from appropriation said, what was your most embarrassing moment with your father? She grew up. And I promise to ask that question first.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So so she'll be ready.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Everybody's coming in late. Yeah.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Good morning, mister chair, members, Patrick Murphy, state policy director for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. Back here today to go into a bit more detail now that you've had a chance to hear from a number of states who are working in this space and and other providers who have worked in this space. I'm sure there are questions that have come up. And then I just recognize that, you know, of this committee, I think Senator Perchlik was here when this concept was first introduced to the committee. Getting a little deeper into some of the decision making that happened as part of our stakeholder process and and answering any questions that might come up through that. So if a number of your speakers over the past couple of weeks have mentioned shamelessly stealing from other states, and so this table came from, I'd say, Utah, and have just added comparison of what is being proposed for the state of Vermont. Cam is a commercial account manager. So that is one of those key differences from a number of states that we have not proposed. Okay. Having a third party.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Would you point out if there's anything in that Vermont proposed, calling us that we need to let that change because we already approved the program. Right? Is this is this what you're proposing this year, or this is just what the program is already?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: This year, we'll need statutory language that you all adopt to actually implement a program. What what's been passed in the last couple of legislative sessions has been just directional language. This is what we would like to continue to begin working on. This is what we authorized. We could begin working on that, but we don't have actual language and statute to implement the program.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: But are the proposals you've made when we talked about in the past the same as in the column, or have you made some changes?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: This is roughly the the same as Okay. Yeah. What we've proposed. The other piece that we talked about in the last meeting was just that we did procure services at the UDM Transportation Research Center. They will, in the next couple of weeks, be able to come back to you with a report on considerations for designing the the fee itself, the rate setting, and which will help inform the language that that you all have.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, they're gonna make the recommendation. That that somewhat brings us earlier this weekend, I think you were probably watching, the consultant that we use that set up the different blocks, and here's how work through the process to make the decision. And we, as I understand it, went through that process with them. That's correct. And it would kind of and it would kind of be helpful to us to, not in a long way, but in a quick way, understand how we fit, what blocks we did, and that will give us up to a point in time, and they kind of have the going if we ever decided as a state to go forward, that it they kind of have a path laid out, and where the decision UVM in that path will have make a recommendation, more than likely having picked out the different blocks that we should use in a path. You get what I'm saying?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah. Could it's so Yeah. So we definitely went through a lot of process to be able to get to initial recommendation, which was found in the legislative report in 2024. But there are a number of different ways to get there. And so UBM might have a different methodology to for you all to consider that gets you to roughly probably the same, you know, rate similar to what we've proposed, but it might have some differences in how it's arrived at, and then that translates differently, course, into statute. But I'll I'll get into a a few slides here that will kind of chart that out.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. But you did watch the Yes. Yeah. And their name is escaping. So

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: and Jenny Roberts from Smith Yep. Presented on on the the guides.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep. It it would just be helpful within that guide because the more we can understand why we did what we did in the path that we're on, it becomes easier to explain it on public. Sure.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So and there's a lot that I've packed into these slides, and so I don't intend to go through all of it, but it is intended to have that information in one place so you can go back to it, then we can have follow-up questions as well. But we'll try and get through as much as we can here. So back in 2021, we did have a drug usage charge study that involved stakeholder group with members of administration and other folks. We had focus groups survey work that was done of almost 400 Vermont residents, which included a number of EV owners. And all of that helped to shape what eventually became the initial recommendation of what not. So we have to be able to choose. There were before us, there was flat fee, mild space user fee, a combination of the two. We've investigated what it would take to to implement them per kilowatt hour fee to try and address the out state and travel. And so we worked through a number of different issues and eventually came out to what you see here in the the right hand column. So this is a slide I definitely did spiel because I had to be the animation. We

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: did see that earlier in the week.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah. So every second represents a year in the But but we did benefit from from these other states in the work that they did. So I heard that some states, you know, have been working on us for twenty years. The agency has generated a number of reports over the the last couple of decades for sure, but has really been concentrated on on this as a viable proposal since 2021. So in some ways, we didn't have to redo a lot of the the pilot programs that other states have done. And there was a direction from the administration to move forward, not just with the pilot, to move forward, start filling the gap that we were seeing with electric vehicles, who up until that point, when we began the study, weren't paying into the transportation funds to fuel taxes and to move to a select number of vehicles that would be a way for us to to, in effect, run a pilot, to work through the issues that we know we'll encounter when we have the broader fleet included bless you. Thank you. The broader fleet included into a managed based user fee. And so the direction was to move more quickly also based on the investments that you all have helped to make in DMD's core IT systems. So the 50,000,000 or so dollars to to really upgrade all those systems makes this possible in a way that wouldn't have been if we still were using, you know, the fifty year old mainframe that we had. So that last phase launched in November this past year, and it set us up well to begin to focus now on developing this fee for January. So there are some key differences between the programs that you all have heard and what we're proposing to do. First of all, ours will start as a mandatory program, sort of battery electric vehicles. Hawaii sort of has a phased in approach. The other programs are very much voluntary, and it's you you could see the implications of that for their success. They're still working on things twenty years later. It's in part because, you know, there's much more to do to be able to incentivize people to participate when it's a voluntary program. It changes the way, for for example, in the next bullet, how a flat fee is paired with the mileage based music fee. In states like Hawaii, which is quite low because both of low annual driving miles, but also they have a much lower dual packs. It's it's, you know, pegged at $50, but the other Utah is rather low as well as Virginia, and it's to encourage people to participate in the program because they think they can save money. What that means for the long term viability of the whole system is that you're not capturing all that revenue above and beyond where you'd say you're flat fee.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So it might catch might they get more people in the program, it might catch up. There could be

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: slow That's right. But it's it's the dynamics of it make it very difficult. The other thing is that a number of states use the commercial account managers, and you've

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: heard from a few of those.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Those costs are generally in the double digits. You heard from Virginia up to 40% administrative costs. That was a key piece of why we thought it best to start with what we had, manual ondometer readings at the annual vehicle safety inspections. And so that's one of the primary drivers of how we came to that. And the starting point, I think it's important to recognize that what we're proposing isn't what we see as the end goal, and it's a beginning towards being able to introduce a MyoSpace user fee and a stairway to the rest of the fleet, but then things will need to evolve, especially if you scale up for the rest.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Did I miss what you said about the cap there, about the 98%? Did you say?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So so in explaining about where where you set the flat fees, you know, and and that's also subject to what you say, approval, but where you set the flat fees and forth in in terms of how you're actually capturing that incremental revenue that isn't being now captured by the gas tax.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. In Virginia, it did 85. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: But what do you mean except for default? So

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: what we propose for sure is in the absence of so a reconciliation at the registration process, a dollar rating is collected at the annual safety inspections, reconciliation of the registration process. And at that point, if there's a call for the data on this particular vehicle and there's no vehicle inspection found with any odometer reading, then it would just default to a flat fee before you could proceed to renew the registration. And so that necessarily you wanna be able to set that at a high amount so that it's encouraged that you go out and get your vehicle inspected and that we are able to obtain those adult reviews.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And the 98% of that would be the highest 2% driver's miles. Right. Yeah.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So you can see here in the graph below in our road usage chart study that came out in 2022, some of the costs were modeled and very clearly the administrative costs were higher for more technology based system. So there were all other concerns that came up during the focus groups and survey work around, you know, privacy issues and that helps avoid things as well. But that was a big driver where we landed with relying on the. Thank you. Just lastly Yes. Yep.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I have, like, one really broad question.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sure.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But just on the point you're making right now, your proposal does not include you could take a photo of your odometer and send it. It's only verified through the inspection.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: As far as I know from from DMV's perspective, that is a possibility that people will be able to have a photo capture of their own abdominal readings. The final reconciliation would be against you know, the abdominal reading at the inspection. But that as you go, you'd be able to, you know, so it more closely mimics the way people pay the gas tax. Just as a follow-up, initially, you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: the the plan has been to do it in inspection, but it might grow into a place where would down. That's part of the, for me, the blocks to making the decision going forward what you choose.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: And that's Our our system sorry. Our system may now be able to support that. So that's what we're working through now. What we what we would not jump right into, for sure, is being you know, using plug in devices

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: In vehicle telematics. Those are more complex, and that's what drives up the cost of the program.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. I really appreciate that flexibility and thoughtfulness in this design. And that's kind of my bigger question, which is one of the things I'm having a little bit of trouble reconciling is like what our role is in program design. We spent a lot of time over the last two weeks hearing about program design. And I have strong thoughts and opinions about even some of the things here. But what I'm understanding from the beginning of your presentation through your proposal is that you have already kind of identified where the program is going. And I'm not sure how we relate to it, like, where our decisions would be made. So you're gonna be presenting us final language. Mhmm. And then each of these components will be outlined in it, and we are gonna be able to tweak it as we see fit.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yeah. And so it's important to recognize that this is being proposed for electric vehicles only, and that's Well, where

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: and then my my question would be to you as we're working through this and we're continuing to see gas tax and and combustion engine. And therein lies the overall question when I keep asking, where do those lines cross when we get out even even if we got that purchase in use, and if we we did, under the scenario that has been presented to us, when do those lines cross, and should we begin to consider expanding this beyond just electric vehicles? And my question to Patrick would be in that I think our go live date is next January? January 2027. Yeah. Would it be possible to begin to expand off of what we've done to include combustion vehicles or move beyond just electric vehicles at that point.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Not at the point of January 2027, but what we're designing is intended to be flexible enough and and enough to to be able to grow in different ways. And that's where I think to to your question about what what the role is with with the committee, it's really defining that direction in terms of a transition beyond mileage based use of the for electric vehicles. And I think that can take a number of different ways. But the intent is to be able to put this in place, learn from it, and be able to then, you know, have that capacity to expand. I think one of the first areas we would look at is definitely, you know, the medium and heavy duty electric vehicles. But then our initial road usage charge study was a much longer title than it was that was for electric vehicles and other highly fuel or Yeah. For electric and other highly fuel efficient vehicles. And so there are key considerations that you wanna tackle before moving to the the plug in hybrids, conventional hybrids, and even more fuel efficient gas vehicles. But that's all a part of the work that we're doing. So we we have a federal grant where much of it is focused on the implementation of this, on the communication strategy to be able to build public support and acceptance of this, but then also to think through what a transition strategy would be. How do you deal with things like border issues, interstate travel? How do you, you know, design a system that can allow for other reporting methods in the future that might make things fairer still for those vehicles that are registered, you know, along along the borders that they do more interstate travel. So there are different things involved in that. Just we wanna work out the first. But then there are also interim measures that could be introduced that that act as a bridge to that point. And I think some of that was was delved into with transportation funding study.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think what we're going to need to hear from you, what are the decision making points on this? What, what do you need from us? What would this look like? But in the background to that, part of the reason I asked the question about financing, and I asked this of Tom Govet when he was in here, and I'm gonna ask this on joint fiscal to do and the agency itself. Given the scenario and the picture that that the administration has set up with the purchase and use tax coming back, if I was gonna look out five to ten years, and I know our revenue estimates are only out five years, where do we go over the cliff with this funding that we are? If we were gonna consider moving and my and I'm gonna say this for me. The reason it's a nonstarter for me, in the overall for in transportation to look at fuel taxes is they're just a declining revenue source. So we're building ourselves a framework that doesn't have a future. Yeah. And for me, a system that's always been user based, it would seem if we're gonna do electric vehicles, then we make a step, and we get everybody in a place, it would seem to be a much more long term vision, but it's gotta be with the backdrop of knowing what's happening in the overall. So we're gonna need to hear from you what would it look like if we took steps to lay the groundwork for consideration of this to move on.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Sure. Appreciate that. And, you know, I mean, I think the fuel tax is one thing that in last year's transportation bill was mentioned in section 18 on intent, that it was the intent of the legislature to to move that this was an interim step towards the rest of fleet, I think, upon elimination of the fuel tax. And there were some interesting folks that testified over the past couple of weeks where fuel tax credits are being used in an automated way as a sort of down payment on the overall use fee, however you wanna define it. And that's something important to think about because one of the main problems with our proposal right now is that it it can address the out of state travel, the the travel coming into the state. If we transitioned fully over to MiloSpace user fee and at the same time upon eliminating the gas tax, we've also lost our ability to capture out of state revenue. And so that's one of those things where you you might wanna be able to rethink that and recognize that you can work with potentially fuel tax credits so that you're still capturing that out of state revenue to a lesser and declining degree, but then you're able to to sort of satisfy the intent of bringing vehicles to some sort of parity as they pay on a per mile basis. And

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: the agency's intent, should this be the language to enact this be in the T bill or a separate bill?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: The the statutory language would be in the T Bill. Okay. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And we'll see that this year?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Right. And and, you know, and I would say to this committee, if if the statutory language to and I'll bring this right up right now to do to meet January 1 deadline for electric vehicles, I might ask this committee if we're interested in maybe laying some groundwork to go beyond that. And and that I as I bring back, what's the picture look like for five years? What's the picture look like for ten years? And how would we pull all this together? It would be my hope that in here that as we leave the end of the session that we have a future. You know, I

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: We want a future. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I I I personally came in to this year going, unless somebody did something to take this, and whether you agree or not with the purchase and use tax that the administration it needs to look towards the future for something. And I think it opens the door for us to have a broader discussion.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So this is getting, Mr. Chair, into what we would, I think, hope to see, sort of using some of the what's been laid out in the guide. We didn't we didn't follow the guide strictly per se. I think it wasn't developed until late in 2023, but we're working with the consultants who developed it the the two years prior. And so much of it was all a process that was leading in that same direction of how you analyze the various things that need to be to to build a strong program. And and, ideally, you know, their experience here helps to shape that guide itself. So we did have a feasibility study that went from 2021 into '22, and it led us to this decision point around it's more cost effective to use a state administered model. We're not engaging with a third party that wasn't proven and that would have high administrative costs where the technology is rapidly changing. So we had systems that we could build off of. I think that is a key piece to our system is that it's built to be simple, but to be able to evolve and become more complex over time. So we did meet several times throughout that fall and came to some shared goals around what the the erosion charge study should do. You've seen this before, but it was important to bless you in guiding the work that led to that decision around what's which direction are we gonna go in. And so it's intended to be revenue neutral to allow for sustained EV uptake. And then there were all kinds of focus on making sure it's an equitable and and fair program, making sure that people would be able to more closely replicate what the gas system is for people so that you don't have to do don't get hit with a big outlay. That was a big concern with just a flat fee option. How inequitable it is, how it would fall, and focus with the lowest incomes, and how it wasn't as reflective as biosphere user fee, obviously, of the impacts to our roadway network. The ease of administration. So this will all be incorporated into what DMV is already doing. They're issuing registrations, administering fees all the time. And so this will be incorporated into sort of business as usual, which helps keep the administrative costs low. And then last bullet is really around making sure that what we do now allows us to grow in different ways in the future. So nothing that we're putting in place precludes us from using other reporting methods. We're building a system in place to be able to accept data from whatever source it might be and then appropriately generate a fee based on the registration information and the vehicle data for the odometer readings. So you've seen this slide before. One of the things that emphasize is that the timing of all of this was it also came right after the adoption of the IIJA, which provided more funding to states who had not yet received funding to be able to move forward with the program. So we used federal research funds for the initial part of our work at an 80%, 20% split, where other states use a lot of their own funds or the earlier programs and earlier iterations of the strategic innovation and revenue blending were all at a fifty fifty split. So we had investigated that early in 2021, But then once this IIJA passed, we were able to get full 80% and will for the implementation of this program. So this sort of begins to frame where we how we started to make decisions about things where which agencies would be responsible. And we did have folks from public service, for example, that help think through what a a per kilowatt power fee was. We had folks from tax department as well as part of that stakeholder advisory group, which were going to be the subject vehicles. Although we we recognize the problem is bigger than electric vehicles, that made the most sense for us to start because it is a smaller group of vehicles and because they weren't up until that point paying anything for road usage charge. The rate setting, we went through a couple of different iterations of that. We worked with CBM Smith on some economic forecasting, looking at the different models. There were seven scenarios to see, you know, where where were the breakeven points and how much we would expect, what the tapping of flat fee at certain amounts due to revenue projections in the out years. And that's how we got to a recommendation in the legislative report. The choices around reporting methods was very clear in terms of the costs that we looked at across the states. And then the privacy issues are largely there's still, you know, things to be tackled with any program that involves IT and sensitive information, but they are largely sidelined with the use of manual endowment readings.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Did you study I can't remember if you decided on this, whether you call it an in buffer rock, the most creative name.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We have

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: not. We have I mean, that's another legislative prerogative.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You guys didn't like to do when you were doing outreach.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: There was not there was there was not a preference. There is one thing if you take a religious charge.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: We'll we'll think of it.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I'm sure you will.

[Andrew Collier, Administrator, Vermont DMV]: Well, we're We'll wobble a

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: little too, we're afraid.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: We're not.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: We're It's the Brennan charge.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Right. I would just we're getting close to and you're not gonna get through all of this. No. I'm not. So it yeah, the point that there is a cutoff point in this, we should probably one of the questions I have, and we hear it, do we expect the federal government to do some

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: sort of flat rate or m buff on fees? Well, they're they're part of the summer in the spring and summer, there were discussions about implementing flat fees both for hybrids. Think one of the first iterations of this was $100 for hybrids, maybe $200 for EVs and plug ins from non hybrids, some variation on that. But there was discussion of flat fees, that has come up a couple of different times over the summer as well With federal reauthorization underway, I would expect that to come up again on how, you know, how to EVs for plug in hybrids. Do we Are they asked to to pay into the highway customer?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Would we expect at that point because we got grant money to help us get to this point in time? Do you think that they might bring up the idea of grant money again for states to move?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So there are there is still funding left in the original IIJA strategic innovation and revenue collection grant program. I've not seen another notice of funding opportunity, but we've kept in touch with folks at FHWA if there is another round. And so there may be discussions there where a second grant that focuses on a transition strategy that builds on the transition strategy we're developing through this grant and focuses on sort of implementation, that might be a possibility. But I wouldn't pretend to know what will happen with the remaining funds in that account. Well, part of my question is what puts us in the best position? In what way? Well,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: there's another round of grants,

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: what would put us in the best position to submit a grant to to talk about where we're going? What would put us in a good position is the adoption of statutory language this year, timely implementation of a program, January 2028. Some of the lessons learned from that that go into the final report and a transition strategy, And then some sense that this model could be replicated elsewhere in order to support other states and potentially the federal government with its ideas raising revenue for the Highway Trust Fund. And I think that is a key piece that we have to work out is interoperability between states. And in New England, we thought there is it's declining, I guess, with New Hampshire, but there are a number of states that have annual vehicle safety inspections where odometer readings are captured and that could be a first step for many other states in New England and the area. Finding a way to appropriate revenue between states would be a key thing so that we're not losing in the long term on that out of state travel into Vermont. But creating a strategy for how that might happen, the collaboration between regional partners that works as a model for other states and the rest of the country would make for a strong second application. I'm gonna cut you off, and

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: we're gonna Megan's going to schedule to you to finish this and and work it through, but thank you for Sure. And we're gonna spend more a lot more time with this. Okay. Thank

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: you. Yeah. Thank you all.