Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So you're live.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So this is Senate Transportation, and we are talking about mileage based user fees again.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Patrick, you've been leading us all through this. So if you could start off and Thank

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: you. For the record, Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director at the Agency of Transportation. I'll just briefly introduce the presentation that you'll hear from UVM Transportation Research Center. So this is a part of our grant work and things that we've discussed over the past couple of years. And there was a definite interest in the part of the committee last year to really have a definitive way of being able to calculate a mileage based user fee in a way that's easily applicable to your constituents, to the public, and so we went through a competitive solicitation process, selected UVM Transportation Research Center to do this work because of their deep background in this research area, and so I'll mostly just let you hear from them all and ask questions about it. You'll notice from the slides and the report that the rate is somewhat different than what we proposed back in 2024 when less was known about all of this. But I think what UVM has done is come to a fair proposal and something that is more easily explainable to the public. I think our hope for this session is just to get a better understanding of how that was arrived at, and then get a sense of the committee of any concerns with it, and work that into basically our statutory framework that we intend to propose the following week. What you're

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: saying is what they are making for recommendation, the agency is going to endorse to bring

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: to us? Yes. So, that is what we would incorporate if we were going to present as ground for the House Transportation Committee. Yes, the sense of both committees is that this is a path forward. We would incorporate that language into the framework that we'll submit next week.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So we are gonna get language on this. Wow. Okay. Wait. I had not anticipated that. That's actually a huge positive.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yeah. I mean, in order to hit 01/01/1927 deadline, we need statutory language to do that.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: And it would only be the T bill.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's not bill. Right. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Okay. So with that, I'll it over to the consultation research team.

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

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Alright. And do we have we sent slides for the day. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You can you can share them. Share off screen. Yeah.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. Alright. Well, that pulls that up, I'll just yeah. So you think Sarah's gonna do the for them. Thanks.

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

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: So why don't we both go up with doctor? Yeah. Hold on.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I'll send it to you.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Thank you. Alright. Well, that's being set up. I am Doctor. Greg Rohnquold. I'm the director of the UVM Transportation Research Center and faculty in civil and environmental engineering.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: I'm Claire Nelson. I'm a research analyst at the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center. We've been just for background on myelopathies. We've been researching this stuff for a long time. We've given national webinars on myelopathies. We've coordinated just a couple of different states who are researching myelopathies, written multiple papers about them. So we we have a fairly good background in this area and are happy to answer questions about the research that we've been doing as well as what some other states are doing as well if that's of interest. And I'm just gonna

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. So our prior work in the CRT was funded by US DOT and the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, which Great. Is partnership with UC Davis, Virtual Tech, and USC, EPAM. But we've focused on evaluating how user fees like this might affect more rural states and other places in different contexts. We've also looked at public perception of hemology, and gas taxes. We've published research papers about that. We've talked about We've little bit

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: had of knowledge boosts to the public as well.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Who's like a desk on the loop? What do think? I didn't even know you existed. Went to UPM. I'm a transportation nerd. How did I not know? Oh my gosh.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Well, now you do. It's great that you're here. Yeah.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: I think we yeah. We presented some of our mileage piece stuff, the house committee last session.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Cool. Mhmm.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's nice, Pete.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Just the same

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: thing. Been in existence now for

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: In one form or another for forty or

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: more years. Oh, wow. Yeah. Forty. Forty.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: It makes all different things a little bit, but UBMS worked with AOT on research for at least forty to fifty years.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: But can we request research from you?

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: It's a pay, it's a fee for service and arrangement.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: They get Well, they don't really pay us over here much, so

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: have to stay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I don't wanna do

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: that. We work through contracts and grants with AOT to form research in those. And Senator Chittenden will talk about that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. Bringing them in to talk to you about that. Get the more funding, more work.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: They changed the name to Research Center probably fifteen years ago. And I can't remember what Nick likes to be called now, but Nick Redman was head had your position at the research center then. She had served in the house for ten years.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Oh, wow. That's a great connection

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: I'm between only the most recent of a yeah, a lot of people have stepped in and around the center over the years.

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

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: so I guess we'll jump into that. I'm happy to talk more about the center too, if that's of interest. Today we're going to be talking about just our mileage view rate setting recommendations. This is what we've contracted with the AOT about. Just to oh, wait. Let's see.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Did I did I just stop sharing?

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Oops. Wrong button once. Okay. So for just kind of lay of the land here, this is probably very familiar to all of you, but we're seeing declining revenue from our gas tax. The y axis here is showing the gas and diesel tax plus the revenue from flat EV fees that the state has implemented. So that's the BEVs and the PHEV infrastructure fees that people pay at registration annually. We're seeing this declining revenue for a couple of different reasons. Not only are there more fuel efficient vehicles on the roads, which means we're getting less revenue for every mile people are traveling, but also there's more EVs, which is just less revenue overall. They're not buying gas or diesel. And then we're also seeing just a reduction in purchasing power over time due to inflation. So this line might be a little bit steeper than what you're used to seeing in some of the Joint Fiscal Offices reports. That's because we've adjusted it to $20.23 dollars. So this would be, you know, in 2040, this is how many $20.23 dollars. So just a steep decline in purchasing power. This this plot is also in our reports too, if you need. Even if we adjusted all of these fees to inflation, which would kind of cover the part of the revenue decline, the purchasing power issue, we would still be seeing reductions because there's less gasoline being consumed less gasoline and diesel being consumed overall. So inflation's part of the issue, and then the other part of it, which the state is hoping to address with mileage fees, is the just reduction in gasoline consumption reducing our revenue. So this is the, you know, language, the intent that was set in the 2025 transportation bill. Lot of words on the slide, so just the important elements of it here, is that the the the intent is for a mileage based user fee for BEV pleasure cars to be put in place. This would be approximately equivalent to the amount that the state currently getting fuel tax revenue. So we've taken that into account with our mileage fee rate setting. And then the other key part of this is that the BEP pleasure card mileage fee would be an interim step towards gradually expanding this to a statewide program.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: We fought for that language. Yeah.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: We so we we've taken that into account in the research we've done, and we'll we'll talk a little bit about what it would mean to expand to a statewide program as well. So just for interpretation's sake, Pleasure Car is kind of this funny. Yeah. Is. That's what I'm sure you know. We interpret that as light duty vehicles, any vehicles that are less than 10,000 pounds in gross vehicle weight. And when we talk about expanding this to a statewide program, we're also talking about doing this for just light duty vehicles. So our research did not take into account what this would mean for medium and for heavy duty vehicles, which have very different transportation behavior and mileage profiles, differences in in weight. So that's kind of land to land. What we've done, which is in a report that's been summarized, provided to you guys, where we reviewed what other states have done in calculating their mileage fees. We reviewed the 2024 report in the legislature, which probably the last time that you received a mileage fee recommendation. Then we basically, we update these recommendations. So we'll talk today about what our new recommendation is and how that differs from what was proposed last year. And we also look at the impact that our proposed mileage fee would have, not only on Vermont Care's household costs, but also just state revenue generating potential, which we feel are kind of the two key factors here. So today, we're mostly going to focus on just what we said we want to do and what the impact is going to be. But if you have any questions about the 2024 legislative report or what other states are doing, we can answer those as well. So ultimately, our fee that we recommend is a 1.4¢ per mile rate for DEV's pleasure cars. I'm going to quickly go through this and we can come back to it if there's more questions about how we actually calculated it. But key elements here are that this rate was set so it's approximately equivalent, that blue box, to what current gas and diesel vehicle owners pay in motor fuel taxes. That was kind of one of the things that was set in the legislative language that we tried to try to account for. We use the equation that we use is the state gas tax, which is dollars per gallon divided by the average fuel economy, miles per gallon. So then you get dollars per mile. We use a five year average state gas tax because that kind of accounts for some of the fluctuations in short term gas prices that feed into the NFTIA and NFTA. And we we can go into the specifics of how we calculated the average fuel economy for vehicles. It's tricky. There's not great data on average fuel economy. We used the Vermont inspection and and registration records. So we took all of the light duty vehicles in the state. We calculated the average fuel economy for gas and diesel vehicles. And then they used distance weighting, which controls for the fact that each car travels different amounts of miles. They consume fuel slightly differently. So this is basically a way to create a better understanding of actual realized mileage or realized fuel economy on the roads as opposed to what the EPA assumes every vehicle's fuel economy is, and they send

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: it as fast. Though Yeah. At 1.4 per mile. Yeah. The other states that have done this Yeah. So for example, Virginia who Mhmm. Has done the calculation and then but they instituted all of their stuff at 85% of Yeah. The total. Where would the 1.4 that you come up with here relate to here? Or is there an easy way to

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: To compare it to what other states do with us? So because states' gas taxes vary so widely, it's a little bit tricky to compare their mileage rates. In our report, there is a summary table that all of the states that have proposed a specific mileage fee, they're in there. So there's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I haven't had a chance yet.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. No worries. It's pretty long. Yeah. Yeah. The I know that Virginia's mileage fee does come out to about 1.3¢, 1.4¢ per mile. I know Hawaii's is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: a

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: fair bit lower partly because their state gas tax is so much lower than ours. The proposed mileage rate in California is much higher because their state gas tax is much higher. I think the important part of this equation would be, you know, the light duty fuel economy. And most states have found something pretty similar to what we've found with, you know, variations depending on their vehicle fleet. But the average light duty vehicle fuel economy that we calculated was 23 miles per gallon in 2023. So for the 2023 data, it's 23. Nice to remember. So you can kind of compare across other state calculations. Right.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: And I think the main thing in response to that is the intent this method here was an attempt to get as close as possible to the actual per mile price that people who have gas and diesel vehicles currently pay So, over for how much they drive and the exact vehicles they're driving,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that was the tax year.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: So that would be as close as possible.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. So just some key differences between the 2024 legislative report on the left here and our report on the right. There's a difference in how we calculated the state gas tax. We used this five year average to account for fluctuations in the market price of gasoline. They had just used the gas tax from the most recent quarter. They used data from 2013 to calculate the fuel economy, which was the last time that the gas tax was increased. We use the most recent data because, otherwise, if you calculate a mileage fee based on 2013 data, that means average fuel economy was 19 miles per gallon. Your mileage fee is gonna be a lot higher. Yeah. So BEV cars on average would be paying a lot more per mile than gas and diesel cars right now. So with that consideration in mind, we used the most recent data so that as soon as you implement this, it can be pretty comparable annual costs between BEVs and gas and diesel cars. They had done some additional fuel economy calculations that we just kind of updated with our best knowledge on how to calculate appropriate averages. And then kind of some of the bigger considerations. They talked about how to account for the additional administrative costs of a mileage fee program right here on the bottom left. They recommended increasing this per mile rate to account for the additional administrative costs. We do not recommend that. We think that, you know, mileage fee administrative costs are more likely to scale with the number of vehicles that are registered in the program than the number of miles that any individual car travels. It'll probably be a similar amount if a car travels 5,000 miles a year or 50,000 miles a year to administer them for the mileage fee. So instead of increasing a per mile rate, we recommend increasing media vehicle registration or inspection fee to account for that additional cost or just a flat mileage fee administrative cost that people who are part of the program would pay. The specifics of that are up to you, but key takeaway is that we don't recommend adjusting the actual rate for that and just including it as a separate separate thing. Additionally, in the 2024 report, they did not really talk about adjusting the mileage fee to inflation, whereas in our report, we talk about that a lot. We will show some thoughts in a second. But, basically, we we feel it's very important to index this fee to inflation, and we'll show some some reasons for that. So this is kind of overall summary. We do recommend indexing the fee to inflation, and we do recommend these more per vehicle flat fees for for administrative costs. We don't recommend any rate based adjustments for weight or fuel economy, which we can talk more about. Quick comment on weight. It's we found, you know, the latest research shows that the differences in road damage based on vehicle weight are pretty negligible for light duty vehicles. It's really when you get into that medium or heavy duty vehicle range that you see vast differences in roadway damage, pretty comparable across the light duty vehicle range. And we're happy to talk more about that study and provide that study to anyone who's interested in learning more about road damage and vehicle weight.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: It was your study?

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Or No. This was a

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: It's referenced in the full report. There's a link to a peer reviewed journal publication that did a demonstration of what the damage to roadways looks like from vehicle weight ranges, and they were trying to answer this question too, one about electric vehicles because they're heavier, and there's no real difference in the light duty range. The damage goes with more power weight, it's a big Nothing in that.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: So at the tiny tail end where the light duty vehicles sit, very, very similar. And then it scales really quickly. That's also what the EPA uses in in their recommendations of roadway damage. Okay. So you'll find kind of similar language on federal government's website. Yeah. So we can talk a little bit more about this too if you guys have any more questions about how we calculated the rate and what we do and don't recommend. But we're going to dive into some of what this means for state revenue. You have a question? Yes.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, I just want to say that I completely think I completely understand your rationale behind indexing the animal because it's the same rationale I've been making as senator Perchlik most about indexing the gas tax. Yeah. And so my only concern that I just wanna flag Yes. Is it would be very frustrating for there to be an index cost on electric vehicle drivers, but not an index cost on gas or combustion engine cars. Yes. So I just wanna flag that.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: I think that's a great lead into our next slide, actually. Did yeah. Did anyone else have any questions before we jump into some of the revenue and household impacts? Okay. So we had done a revenue forecast as a part of this work. The revenue forecasts come from EPA's moves. It's a it's a big model. It includes vehicle fleet turnover, fuel economy projections, mileage of vehicle projections. These are Vermont County specific projections from data that the state provided in 2023. So I just kind of summed everything across all the counties in Vermont. So it is Vermont specific. And another key aspect of this fleet projection is that it takes into account federal policies and how they might impact new vehicle sales. So we feel this is, you know, the best way that we could have projected transportation specific revenue. If you have any questions on that, we're also happy to answer what the model does and doesn't do. So the revenue here again, it's scaled to $20.23 dollars on the y axis. So this is showing the decline in purchasing power as well as revenue. So you can see if there's there's a couple of things to highlight here. The blue lines are what we're currently doing. No mileage fee. This is the flat in infrastructure fees for the CEVs and PHEVs and the gas and diesel taxes. Anything that's dashed is that fee indexed to inflation. So the current fee is blue. The yellowish orange is if we were to only implement a mileage fee for BEVs, which is the state's current trajectory in the next year. And the pink line is a statewide, every registered vehicle on the roads pays

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Light vehicle.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Light duty vehicle. Sorry, because we're just focusing on light duty. Thank you. So kind of key takeaways here. Even if we were to, you know, index everything to inflation, under our current situation, we're still going to see a decline. So this is kind of accounting for the effect of purchasing power. This is just due to the reduction in in fuel consumption from PEV and PHEV and HEV adoption and the increase in fuel efficiency of vehicles. So, you know, mileage fees are a pretty important part of the Vermont transportation equation for just making sure that we're we're maintaining our our state revenue. But the the other part of this too is you can see there's a massive difference in purchasing power when you adjust for the account when you adjust for inflation. So there's a couple of different measures of inflation. For this one, we use the National Highway Construction Cost Index.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Is I think we are our JFO staff first, so there's two that he always references, and it's the cut instruction one is much steeper versus the one that we typically

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: The CPI is the yeah. We and in our report, we kind of we have a table that compares the different measures of inflation if you're interested and talk about when we would recommend applying different ones. Kind of main main takeaway there is we recommend looking at the transportation budget, seeing what your biggest budget items are, and then adjusting it based on the inflation measure that best best measures the change in cost from your largest budget item because that's, you know, what you're putting that money towards.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah, was going to say, we recommend dealing with inflation, but we haven't recommended a specific index. We've done our calculations with the construction index, and this is an average, this is actually a 4% inflation rate, is what's being shown here. That's based on the last ten or fifteen years.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: From 2003 to 2025,

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: So construction whatever that costs index spiked in the last couple of years, but we're using a longer term.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Okay,

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: And then you could in principle, right, you can make a composite index of the CPI and then the construction costs, which

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: could

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: say fiftyfifty salaries and administrative costs and other construction. You could do something like that. Yeah.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: And we'd be happy to talk more about how we could if this is an area that you guys wanted to go and explore, what would it mean to adjust to different inflations? We'd be happy to do more specific and robust revenue calculations. Yeah. So that's kind of what we see for our revenue situation. Happy to answer my questions about this at the end too. What this would actually mean for Vermonters household costs, kind of who you're you're applying this to. So on the left here, we have some common vehicles registered in the state of Vermont. This is from the Vermont registration and inspection data from the DMV. This column here is showing the cost per mile on average that these vehicles pay, assuming they all travel 10,000 miles a year just so we can, like, normalize the cost per mile. So you can see the more fuel efficient vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf, the Toyota Prius, Toyota Prius Prime, they all play pay closer to 0.8¢ per mile currently, whereas internal combustion engine vehicles, the gas and diesel ones, pay more. They're paying 1.3 to 1.8¢ per mile. So, obviously with a mileage fee program, everyone would be paying the same amount per mile. This is kind of part of the discrepancy amongst cost per mile payments that a mileage fee would help solve. On the far right here, you can see if we were to apply a mileage fee, what that would mean in annual dollars per year that these cars are paying. So these cars that are currently paying less than 1.4¢ per mile at recommended mileage fee would obviously see cost increases. So that would be, on average, about, you know, anywhere from 65 to $80 a year or more for these BEV and PHEV owners. For gas and diesel vehicles, we would see, you know, less fuel efficient vehicles will see lower costs. This could mean they would actually see cost savings every year, which is the blue ones going this way, $50 a year less, $25 a year less. Some would see moderate increases in costs, again, on a scale of $9 a year. Is

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Did you the cost for the the I guess you don't have the the I guess the lead. Mhmm. Did you include maintenance fee?

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Would be a replacement or the maintenance fee.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Talking about annual cost, different infrastructure fee.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: So the infrastructure fee is the current taxes, and the mileage fee would be replacing the infrastructure fee. So it's all

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: this $65 does include that 89 or

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: 5%?

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. If you were to transition from the flat fee to a mileage fee. Yeah. $65 a year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: But I'm just black. I don't like that.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: And I'm not happy about that because one of the main motivators in our climate action plan for getting folks to make the conversion to less air polluting, better vehicles for our environment is the cost is less. So I'm just frustrated that we would be doing the exact opposite of basically what we're trying to do in the climate action plan realm.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: There's another, lower on that subject too, there's a lot more we could talk about in that space, but because of federal gas tax will still be around if it's going anywhere, and switching to BEV, even with this mileage fee, you'll still end up saving money because of you're avoiding federal gas tax still.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Oh, wait, what?

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: They're all just the safety

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, do you have a slide with the federal taxes on it?

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: No, because we're yeah. We haven't looked at the federal what that would mean for in the total gas tax that you're paying. We're just paying attention to the state portion.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So I guess maybe a more clear way to say it is the state of Vermont would be disincentivizing in some regard with this fee structure, but the overall cost because of federal gas tax, you would still see a lower amount than a combustion I

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: think in other research we've done in the past, and you can see here too, think that another thing to think about too, like yes, additional cost, obviously, I mean, disincentivizes a lot to purchase that thing or use it, but it's also a relatively small cost in the overall magnitude of the taxes that people pay or just general costs for ducking. Dollars $50.60 per year, this is for 10,000 miles of driving. To put that perspective, we did national survey research where we asked people about perceptions of gas, fats, and mileage fees. And one of the things that we did, it was a temp study where we asked people what they think about these different options. And then we give them background information about the fact that these seats go into trust funds that is paid for transportation, then we give estimates of what you actually pay. And a lot of people think they pay a lot more in gas tax than they actually did, right? It's a relatively, compared to your property tax or sales tax or income tax, it's tiny. So that Make

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: it more very good for raising gas tax, not necessarily just dumb. I would just say that it is a big difference, 60. My mom has a Toyota Prius and she's on a fixed income and that matters. Know what that $60 does matter.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. So I'm just saying the point of these slides information is to give you this context of here's what these numbers are, and our goal is just to give you all some information.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: In addition to the federal taxes, like, if you're if you have a Subaru Outback and you switch to the Leaf, you're not you're you're gonna save money with the difference between the two. Yes.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's true.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. When we set

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: it for 89, I

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: was thinking we we set that at, like, half of what we thought. The average car pays around.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Which is about, you basically nailed it, it is about half. It would be doubling the cost base.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So the $65 is less than if we had made it $190

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: a year. So

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: just to put this in a in a different framing, those are the most popular vehicles, but possible to travel differently than individual vehicles do. So we have in our report broken out by a bunch of different ways that you can look if you have a community concern that you're interested in. It might be in our report in our tables. This is a table of one car and two car households with different vehicles in them. So, you know, we have our EV in the green, PHEV in the pink, and then gas or diesel vehicle. They look like cars, but they could be cars. They could be trucks. They could be SUVs. It's just an icon. And we see that, you know, on average, the gas and diesel vehicles, this would be under a statewide transition, so any vehicle paying a mileage fee. Gas and diesel vehicles will see just, like, a small bump, $10 a year on average. This is due to the fact that we've rounded our fee to the nearest tenth of a cent. It was 1.36¢ per mile. We rounded that to 1.4. That means on average, people are gonna pay just a little bit more than they would with their gas tax. Currently, we can answer the questions about that too. The more fuel efficient vehicles, PHEVs, EVs, we'll see that closer to 50 to $65 a year bump. But this you can see in the the bars around it, this varies. Some people might actually see cost savings with an EV every year. Some might see larger cost increases. There's a lot of heterogeneity in the way that people travel and use their vehicles. So averages are one part of the picture. The actual individual context is a different one.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. And I would point out there are four detailed tables in the report. And this is these calculations are carried out for every actual vehicle on the road today in Vermont and for each household. So this is based on the real fuel economy to these vehicles and their actual mileage from odometer readings. So using the same type of data, you would actually collect it and implement the mileage. So that's

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: These are the real expected Vermonter.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And these are Crescent Day Rates. Yes. Our joint fiscal office had done research over time, and the amount of money spent per household per vehicle, it's the lowest it's been since the 1920s. The lowest percentage of household in the household. Interesting.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah, I mean that's because the gas tax has been an excise tax instead of a sales tax.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Another thing- Federal income has been increased in inflation.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: And thinking about the inflation adjustments too, that we don't have to deal with this with all of the taxes that we have because an income tax and sales tax basically adjust themselves for inflation. As prices go up, salaries go up, so we don't have to worry about it. But when you charge an excise tax, small quantity or something, then if you don't, then that's inflation. It's just always just purchasing power immediately.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Or you exert the pressure on the people who are currently in positions of power to increase it, which would never possibly He

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: does it with tax every session, which we know, doesn't show Yeah.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Just commenting quickly on the fact that we did use actual Vermont or data here. We have some maps in the report too that are showing, you know, using this data in Vermont aggregated to protect individual people's privacy. Of course, these are there's at least in every one of these hexagons, at least fifty fifty cars. So you can't, you know, zoom in and say that Bob, my next door neighbor, is not paying his fair share. So we can see that currently in Vermont, and it might be a little hard with the glare, but you can see darker colors around some of the main kind of cities in Vermont. That would be people are paying less cost per mile currently under our current fee structure, so gas gas gas, diesel tax, PV and PHPVs. But that's because they take on more fuel efficient vehicles. In the more rural areas, rural drivers are paying more partly due to owning less fuel efficient vehicles.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Wait. So darker

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: is you're paying Lower cost per mile.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So in a way, but less fuel efficient vehicles. So it's No.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: It's not a direct fuel economy plot. It's a they're paying less per mile currently. They travel less. And the reason what?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: They travel less.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: So it's been normalized per per distance. So this is it's I think what you were saying is it's basically a math of average fuel economy. Oh, you about it in that way. So in more urban areas, you'll more likely have smaller cars, more fuel efficient cars, so the cost per mile is lower. And some of the warmer colors on the map are in the more rural areas where people are more likely to have bigger cars, older cars that are less fuel efficient, so they're paying more per mile. So this is the current geographical look at

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: who's paying more and less.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So the place paying the most is this little red or this little orange light pink peach color in the middle.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Basically, those people, yeah, have What district is it? In the mountains. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And then

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: is it it's fees as opposed to, like, all costs?

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Well, it's the BEV fee and the gas tax. We just got fees. Yeah.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Okay. That was just to simplify that But it's not like like the cost of the fuel itself.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: It's just the the gas tax, the diesel tax. Yeah. So this is the fees.

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

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Yeah. So that's just a different thing.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: And we're looking at rural areas too. Right? Samples. How many households are in one of these little hexagons? The smaller says more.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Hexagon in Burlington might have 700 vehicles in it, and then that that one might have 50. But all of them have at least 50. So mileage fee, obviously, kind of worrying about everyone pays the same amount per mile. Right? The more important part of this would be the the cost differences. So we can see in this more city centered areas, Orange is paying more per year. We can see that the in kind of the more rural areas around Vermont, people will on average be paying less per year with a mileage fee program. Interesting. Yeah. It's it's because, you know, most most people in rural areas currently pay less than 1.4¢ per mile because their vehicles are less efficient. So they're paying more in gas taxes than they would with with the muckle cheese. Yep. So

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We can push along toward the end. We're gonna there's going to be a lot more questions, and particularly after we've all had a chance to go through this disease. Yep. Yes. And we don't necessarily need you back in the room, but we will Zoom your Teams or something to get you on And the but the assumptions behind all of this before we get to the floor to do something, we will wanna come back to this and do that. Sure. And we this for us is more technical, and I say this for the committee members, will be in the T bill for us. T bill for us will be the second half of this year. Okay. So it we probably won't be into this until the March, maybe early in April. Okay. So and it it there's so much here that we're gonna need will have you back probably in that time frame for a little refresher, but with more time going into the details of socialist. Yeah.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Sounds good.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But why don't I think we should head it to the end in that because of the last slide. Yeah. I correct. I've I've said a lot to the committee before that we have a short term problem and we have a longer term. The overall getting to miles traveled is really part of the long term solution of all of this. But your points here deal with that shorter term in the in between. So why don't you mind with that? A second? Yeah,

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: so I mean, two of the takeaways here is, milder seeds aren't going be enough by themselves because of inflation, because seeds are per mile, per gallon, they face the same problem that they're going to continuously need to be adjusted. Would recommend in a report, threw together a formula you could put in your statutory language, but to put the inflation adjustment as part of the rate calculation so that you don't have to come back to it every year and adjust itself like a sales tax or like income tax does naturally. And then how to save revenue, I'm sure is on your mind when you think about change of gas tax and particularly transitioning everyone to MHPA at some point. I would say travels, think 20 to 30% of travel in the state. So you would need to capture that and there are ways to do that that are relatively straightforward. There are more complex ways to do it, but simple ways to keep the gas stamps and then can either, Vermonters can get refunded for the gas tax at the end of the year, or when you go to collect the mileage fee, you could account for the gas tax or repay and then either refund or pay the difference. And different states are playing out the same sort of scheme. And you would use the same information you're already collecting to charge the mileage fee to estimate someone's estimated gas tax, like we've done our own calculations. So there's nothing about Vermont implementing its own mileage fee that would prevent it, so continue to capture revenue per out state drivers.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's great. This is great. Very simple. We will be coming back.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Patrick has us on regander for a few months, so we're Cool.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And one of the reasons it will be later is we will have to deal with it in a T Bill. The T Bill will not be with us till the, like, the March. So it'll be some of that. Okay. Yeah.

[Dr. Gregory (Greg) Rowangould, Director, UVM Transportation Research Center]: Okay? And we have, yeah, we have some budget and capacity to go through Patrick, but we can look at things a few different ways from some other There's

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: a specific question that's not answered in the report. Chad, that's best one to do. Thank you.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: We've been Phoebe.

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: It's like, I don't know. I think we actually have secret tooth.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. That's we want. In the stretch of trying to get little things out of the way, this might go in the if you don't mind, could you in ten minutes?

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: Absolutely. Hello, Mike Covey, executive director of the Mount Traditions Coalition. I'm here to talk about the proposal to require life vests. I understand the tragedy of loss of life, and I understand the cost in that. I also understand that there are some problems with it. The first one that comes to mind is bowfishing, which is quite popular on Lake Champlain. We're often out there after I do it myself. We're often out there after species that are problematic. Tench really comes to mind. It's an invasive species. But we're always underway with the trolling motor. It's very difficult to shoot a bow and arrow with any accuracy through the water anyways, but that's worse if you try to say you have to have a life vest on. That activity occurs in two feet of water or less, generally speaking. So that's one place where I see a real conflict a lot of times. So we can't shoot under power in a motorboat at ducks and such, but we can from a canoe or a kayak. Again, you know, there's that it's problematic in shouldering in the firearm and getting the the proper, shoulder weld and cheek weld and sight picture and all of that when you're wearing an extra inch and a half of padding or whatever. While I understand that there are life vests that are very slim when you put them on, those are also perhaps outside the the, means of some folks. So I think it's questionable to as adults, once we turn 18, right, we can sign a contract and then be held responsible for that contract or held responsible for our actions within the law. I think we also have to, with those responsibilities, have the autonomy to make our own decisions on some things, I think this should be one

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: of them.

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: However, I was surprised to find that it's only a requirement to wear a life vest up to the age of 12. And so we wouldn't have an issue with, raising that age, to anyone younger than the age of 18. But once you're once you're a fully vested citizen, I think this is a decision that people can make. And I understand it's only for part of the year. And I understand that there are few votes out there. I don't think it's any less tragic when somebody perishes from drowning in any of the warmer months. And I think it's very likely much more commonplace than it happens when we're swimming. And so, you know, are we gonna require a life vestal swimming? I just think that it's it gets to being a bit of overreach when it's for everybody. I think, you know, that's that's my testimony. It's very brief. There are certainly problems with it for some types of punting. There I've spent many a lazy day on the Connecticut River now that I finally have a boat. Just last year got one and I absolutely love it. You know? And we'll be out there and and just jump off the side of the boat to go swimming, you know? So that's another aspect that where this, you know, is a huge complication, probably not. But I think it's just an unreasonable expectation to say that we're gonna tell adults what they shall do, on something that they should be able to make a decision on. And the the problems I've outlined in terms of shallow water and certain types of hunting are are very rare.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Do you, say that in most of these hunting situations that it's in very shallow water?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So if you're if you're

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: I can't speak for everybody. Right? And there are exceptions to every rule even if I could. But if you're hunting dubbing ducks, you know, these are ducks that are you you only see the you a little butt out of the water, you know? That's that's the water there. They're in those shallow bays. So in that scenario, yeah, it would be shallow water. And with the bow fishing, it's it's know, refraction makes hitting anything in any amount of water very difficult. It's so the more water you have, the more difficult it becomes.

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

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: So you're generally in the most shallow water you can be, you know, but you're constantly looking for fish, but just don't sit around and come over them with a boat and say, oh, I'm gonna hang out and let it shoot at you. So it's a lot it's a constantly moving process. And that would fall under, you know, being underway. People, you know, you're gonna shift from place to place, bay to bay if there's just nothing happening. And so in those cases, you're gonna be underway and you might be cutting across with the water. And that's where I come to the point of, you know, this is we have to leave adults some measure of decision making. We have to respect the autonomy that comes along with being a citizen to some degree. And I would suggest that this is a place where we should do that. And that's not to minimize the tragedy of any loss. It's

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Yeah. Thanks, Mike. Would you

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: you still oppose it if there was an ex still, like, wild hunting? Because you have a broader issue just that the government overreach

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: as you stand. None of that would improve it, but it doesn't cover you know, people who are efficient or very accomplished boaters. You know? I I I can't I'm not gonna throw them under the bus and say that, you know, they're out

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: of right now.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: That would be

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: a much better analogy if that was a missed opportunity, I'm sure.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I couldn't let it go.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Okay. Thank

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: you. And if we're gonna exempt hunting and fishing, right, then why everyone's gonna ask why are we exempting that and not anything else.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Did you have an opportunity to listen to the testimony on this bill, the previous testimony?

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: I've listened to some of it, yes. And so my understanding is that the concerns come from the expense and tragedy of those folks who are lost.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. And I also would say that I'm worried about people who are duck hunting and bow fishing, falling out of their boat, and drowning. I mean, we heard a story specifically of a duck hunter who, because you're wearing such heavy clothing typically, he drowned, and it was devastating to his entire family. It cost tens of thousands of dollars to respond.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: It caused serious harm to the people who were onshore. So I actually think your your group is actually exactly who needs to be told to wear life jackets because if it's going to be slightly disincentivized because maybe you have to buy a specialty one and Cabela sells them for, like, $89, and they look pretty cool. They blend in. They got all the wood colors. You know, that group, I think, actually has to be kind of given their rule followers is what I keep hearing about hunters and and fishermen. So your rule followers. And I think, unfortunately, until we have a rule, we're going to see almost those yearly deaths in in serious forms, and it just breaks my heart. So I actually well, I understand the autonomy piece. I actually think your group is exactly the group who needs to be wearing life vest because you wear extremely heavy coal clothing, and what we heard was you can fall overboard. You can be a well trained you can think I'm a great swimmer. You hit that water, it's ten seconds before your entire like, your extremities stop being able to function. So I respect your point, but, you know, it just it feels

[Claire Nelson, Research Analyst, UVM Transportation Research Center]: like that's actually the group of

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: people we need the most protection for, especially if you're gonna take someone out who is younger, who's maybe 12, and they're having to wear a life vest, and then grandpa or dad isn't wearing a life vest. That's exactly how that man died. His his grandson was in the, like, on the in the boat or onshore properly vested, and he wasn't. You know? So it's like, I get it. I I hear what you're saying, but it we did hear some really compelling testimony. And it's I would hope that even if you don't support this language and you do lobby against it, that you give information to your constituencies of folks who duck hunt and bow hunt about the value of why you would choose to wear leg vests in those situations, even if you think it's an independent choice.

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: I swim like the average piece of granite and almost always choose to wear leg vest as a result. And there are times where it is not workable for me. So I know there are times where it's not workable for my constituents. And I firmly believe that hunters and anglers are for the most part, there are exceptions to everything, very law abiding. And I believe that Vermonters are very law abiding. And I believe that a great number of Vermonters don't wear seat belts, and I believe a great number of my folks won't wear a life vest when they're told to.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: We actually have some of the highest percentage of seat belt usage in the country. We're like over 80 plus percent, though.

[Mike Covey, Executive Director, Vermont Traditions Coalition]: Be that as of May, I'm I'm confident that people are gonna still make the decision of when they're going to choose to wear a leg list. I think that there's a lot of value and a lot of space to make an adjustment in this law to protect underage voters, and I think that's sensible. And I don't anticipate that this is a hill I'm gonna die on, but I do think it's problematic. And, you know, an exception for hunting and fishing would be a great start. I just tend to fall back on the idea that even if we don't always make the best decisions, we all do or should have the autonomy to make those decisions as adults.

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT)]: Thank

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