Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: Hello.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: It's Senate Transportation. We're going back live. It's Tuesday, the twenty fourth, and we are here to hear about s two fifty eight from senator Chittenden, and he appears to like high speed drivers.

[Sen. Thomas "Tom" Chittenden — Chittenden Southeast District]: I I don't know if I'd frame it that way. Am a high speed driver. Will admit to that. I'm a bit of a lead foot. Tom Chittenden representing Chittenden Southeast. Thank you for having me. Yes. All members of the committee, the chair. Committee. This bill, I believe, is currently in senate judiciary, but I I hear that might be an argument to ask for senate transportation to consider this language. I'll just tell you why I presented this bill, why I introduced it, and thank you for the co signers in the committee. Appreciate your support. I was at the NCSL conference last summer getting a prize of a lot of different initiatives across the country. This is one where many other states have done this, so this is not not us blazing a trail by any means. And there, met some advocates and had some follow-up conversations, really touching testimony about how this can save lives. What this would effectively do, my understanding of it though, Damien understands it a lot better than I do. If you've heard of the interlock or the breathalyzer type component where somebody would lose their license because of drinking and driving or otherwise, they can go through certain, I diversion, but other mechanisms to the core where they can install a breathalyzer and they have to conform to that before the car would start. This is a similarly, if you get pulled over for speeding, so enough where you lose your license after a certain number of points or so on, you could, opt for this technology, which either is onboard in the control computer solutions of the modern day cars, but I think that's where Danny can elaborate on the technical specifics, but it would effectively You would opt to then have your car not be able to exceed your speed limit. What I used to call growing up a governor, they used to put those on certain commercial vehicles where you just couldn't go faster than you're certain. But this might be a little more intelligent than to adapt to what the speed limit is for where the vehicle is. So there are a lot of advocates for this. I'd be happy to come and test ify if you want to hear from them, I have them in my inbox, but I'm under the impression this would be cost neutral. It wouldn't cost us anything. People would not be obligated to do this. It would be if you got pulled over for speeding on a repeated amount of times or for whatever reason, this would be an option you could pay to pursue in order to continue to drive but with restrictions on what your vehicle can do. Don't know if I missed anything.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White — Vice Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: I think we shared. Well, thank you so much for attending and for coming and presenting the bill. I think what makes me most interested in your bill, outside of being net neutral cost wise,

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: is that You made her very

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White — Vice Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: hard. Yeah. Now it's really not me. But that we have seen repeatedly in this committee that enforcement has dropped, specifically after COVID. And I think the reasons that we've heard that enforcement has gone down, it's just happenstances, we don't have as many people available. The staffing is much shorter. So my hope is that this would help alleviate some of the, not necessarily demand for enforcement, but like the demand for that staff intensive enforcement. So that's the first key thing. And then I really do hope we get to hear testimony from, I believe she is your constituent. But she's in Chittenden County Summer, she might be in the other districts. But there is a woman who is the executive director of a national organization on this topic and she lost her son due to a vehicle crash and someone who was repetitively speeding. So, it certainly has a real world impact for bikers and pedestrians and that is a very dear issue to me. So, I do hope we take this up because I think it could help alleviate some of the enforcement safety conversation we had and help out

[Sen. Wendy Harrison — Clerk, Senate Transportation Committee]: the bikers and pedestrians of the world potentially.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: If gave us the list, we'll do that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison — Clerk, Senate Transportation Committee]: I was just gonna say, your timing is good. We all agree that safety would be a major issue for us this year, so. Yeah. Thank you, friends.

[Sen. Thomas "Tom" Chittenden — Chittenden Southeast District]: You very much. Too easy. Thank you. Now,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White — Vice Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: feet out of your lunch.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: Yeah. It's super.

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: Hello. Hello. Morning. Should I just jump right in? Jump right in. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Senator Ann Watson, chair of Natural Resources, and sitting in this seat today because we have a bill over across the hall, S-two 24. I think of it as a lakes miscellaneous bill, touches on many different topics, and there's a part of it that I think is relevant to this committee, which is why I wanted tell you, come to tell you about it, and I'm gonna try to do it in the next, you know, five minutes. You probably have ten. Okay. All right. I mean, I don't wanna push it. So just by way of background, one of the goals that we have, I think, as a state is to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species. And one of the ways that we do that is when boats travel between lakes, you might have a boat wash station. They don't exist at every lake, but there's quite a few of them. And there might be inspection station where someone might say, look, you've got some milfoil on your boat. Could you take that off? Great. For this new technology, sort of new at this point, but wakeboats, part of the way that wakeboats function in wakeboat mode, you could just use them as a regular motorboat, not in wakeboat mode, but when they're in that mode, they They have a special ballast tank that takes on water, and so they can create particularly large wakes behind them. Great. Sounds like fun. One of the difficulties with that is that after you are done with that, and you're gonna potentially change lakes, you still have Once you've drained the tank and you transport it to another lake, there still may be some residual aquatic biota that may live in that tank, and so one of the difficulties is, particularly with wakeboats, is aquatic invasive species spread. In order to prevent that, you have to have decontamination using hot water, etcetera. So, it would be a lot easier if we could say, this wake up is choosing, is opting to have a home link, and you don't have to decontaminate if you're just staying in your home link. And if you go elsewhere, then you do need to decontaminate. This is known as the home link rule, which was in ruled, had some problems, and so I think we're re revisioning that and putting it in statute. And one of the ways to revision that, the Home Lake Rule, is to have a way to designate that on your registration, on your boat registration. And so we did receive written testimony from folks at the DMV that it would be possible to have on the board for boat registration a box to be checked off for for a wake boat, and they also said that it would be possible for them to include a line where they someone could designate which lake is their home lake. And so that would make it much easier anyway to have this home lake rule. And as I understand it, there is supposed to be a registration certificate that is pocket sized. She'll be available at all times for inspection on motorboat, which would potentially have that kind of information on it. And so or at least that's my understanding. And so, you know, if there's a boat inspection station, they could just produce that registration that would show that they're a motorboat and what their home lake is. So there is a part of s two twenty four draft 4.2 that would require that the commissioner of motor vehicles provide the registration of vehicles that she'll include a checkbox for an owner to designate a motorboat as a motorboat. And that if the owner designates a a wakeboat, the owner shall designate the home lake of the wakeboat on the application form. The commissioner of

[Sen. Thomas "Tom" Chittenden — Chittenden Southeast District]: motor

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: vehicles shall annually compile the number of motorboats registered as wakeboats and the home lake designation, and she'll submit that compiled information to ANR. And this is particularly going to be helpful for us because we actually don't know how many wake boats are in the state of Vermont right now. We've heard it could be as few as 17. It could be a lot more, but we just don't know. So I just wanted to flag that for you all.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: So what's your timetable with your bills?

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: That's a good question. We are walking through the bill right now because there's so many parts. The goal is to have a new draft done by this week for either a vote by the end of the week or for shortly after we get back from break. Okay. Happy to accommodate if there's

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: The question in here is if this is gonna move and we wanna review it, it becomes harder because you're billed so late

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: Yes.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: To ask for it to officially move there because that would put it past crossover. But I think we'll have a decision. We'll we'll wanna at least do due diligence for it how we did that. We wanna be respectful to your committee, but it is

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: It is late. Yeah. I fully understand. Yeah. Go ahead.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senate Transportation)]: Has DMV testified? So we

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: received written testimony to them.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: They were. They They can do that. Yeah. We would we would probably wanna have them in at at least did and do that. If you're going to be really late and we didn't get to this, you can always vote the bill out and then ask for a couple of days to let it sit.

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: Yes. There

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: are options. And that would give us a chance to

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senate Transportation)]: Is there a cost? Does it have to go to a money committee?

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: This bill will have to go to finance. Okay. That's a good question.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison — Clerk, Senate Transportation Committee]: Just a couple comments, Desiree. I mean, I think it's really good to find out how many of those boats we have, and in a lot of places there aren't those washing facilities, so I think this is important. And then some boats would be on a river, you just have, like the Connecticut River, there are boats that So,

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: one of the things that is happening simultaneously is that there is some rule making going on about which bodies of water are available for wake boats, because you have to be a certain distance away from the shore, and I think there's a consideration for depth. It would be interesting to find out how many of those bodies of water that are essentially eligible for wakeboat mode are are riggers. I don't know that. It's especially So thank you for doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. And I mean, no disrespect that this bill is happening late. It is just how it has evolved. No. But happy to, you know, have your your brains on this.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senate Transportation)]: Well, whatever reservoirs call considered lakes. This

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: for this context, yes. Yep.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senate Transportation)]: That's probably where they would be on a river, is really a reservoir.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison — Clerk, Senate Transportation Committee]: Yeah, well the Connecticut has reaches that are 30 miles long between the dams.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senate Transportation)]: I can imagine parts of that thing. Think we'll

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: Probably. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (Senate Transportation)]: Good to go.

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: One question would be how wide the river is at that point. Right. Because it has to be a certain number of, you know, feet away from the shore.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: 200 feet or Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison — Clerk, Senate Transportation Committee]: Is it 200 feet away from China or a crawl?

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: I can.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison — Clerk, Senate Transportation Committee]: I have to.

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: Well, Alright. That'll be fine to talk.

[Sen. Richard Westman — Chair, Senate Transportation Committee]: Yeah. Thank you for coming in and alerting us. Yes. We'll we'll have a conversation here.

[Sen. Anne Watson — Chair, Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee]: Sounds great. And I will let's be in touch with what our timeline is. Okay. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah.