Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Sorry. I didn't of not being able to early.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, for us, we're pretty late here today. It is Tuesday, March 31, maybe March ago. And this is Senate Transportation, and we are here with the honorable representative, Walker, the chair of the House Committee on Transportation, and he's here to talk to us about the things that are important to transportation that are in the TPA.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Good morning. We're each chair and committee. Thank you very much for having me. I'm Matt Walker, I'm Scott Mitchell, the House Transportation Chair, H what, 09:33 is now over in the Senate.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We'll take

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: It will be. It's on its way. It's been passed out on it what?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is it September?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: September. I was working on 930 Creek or something. Might be something that relates to purchase and use tax that may have something to do with something that you might might wanna look at, you know money issues whatnot that yeah the purchase and use of the miscellaneous tax bill would switch from the current one third two thirds to the new numbers that we think would be seventy three twenty seven And then there's also an additional 4% rooms and meals to go in to cover the drop in the education fund. But that's not in our bill, that is in the miscellaneous tax bill, but it's certainly something we spent some time on

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: in committee. So the miscellaneous tax bill has the purchase and use? The T bill does not. Okay.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Since we're talking about money, the majority, the 99 plus percent of the T Bill matches the governor's recommend with only a couple of small changes. There's $192,000 to drive electric. Sure, you know, Representative Burke is a strong advocate for that for a long time. The idea there was that there was a little bit of money left in the BAA where the T funds didn't have to be paid back to pilot fund one of the best part of something we did last year and so that was where that number sort of originally started from was what was their money that wouldn't impact money in the T fund for this year. And so as far as the the T Bill went out of committee eleven zero, it went over to ways and means and in they put an amendment in the next day, 11 page amendment and then off to appropriations. We heard the amendment from Ways and Means the following week, so there has been no testimony or activity outside of Legis Council or the BFO on the Ways and Means amendment. Two big parts of the Ways and Means Amendment that are different from the original bill is that most of it is to do with changes to the mileage based user fee. I wouldn't say that there's significant work to still be done from the mileage based user fee area. There's a lot of work happening between now and the January 1 implementation date. There's significant changes in terms of when money will be collected, when some owners will start paying that merchandise processing fee, what the options are to pay. We have not gone through the 11 page amendment in ways and means, but there are significant changes from our other than a quick straw poll vote on it. But we did not get into the details or pay

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: for the testimony on that 11 changes. Your point of view, What's not been about mileage based use or fee needs to be flushed?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: I think understanding this, the biggest change is that there was an expectation we'd be collecting mileage based use or fee is in new car, particularly new vehicle sales as of January 1. In the way the new system is now, we we won't be looking at any money into the t fund for at least twelve plus months. That's Awesome. In the way

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that it's constructed as it's coming over.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Yes. Okay. Had, out of the original, we had expected there would be mileage based use that's been collected the January 1. There's now in the system, and there were gonna be multiple payment options now. It'll be trued up after the year of driving and we would be looking at collections of G Bill significantly later than our original version. Also the other, so that we, I would say that there's review there that's certainly worth more work than what was done by our committee. But for you to look and act, obviously, however you choose. I just want be clear that what came out in the final version related to mileage based eugency, those 11 plus pages were not done by our The other piece that was done is in the Ways and Means Amendment. We as a committee, which we had sent over, we sent out a bill that would look to find help for town highway aid. And there was an effort to put a 50% of the annual surplus in the pilot funds back in the state aid for town highways and that would be after expenses and after the pieces that were related to the pilot fund, looking for a structural long term way to help the towns particularly as they face property tax issues in trying to deal with infrastructure projects in their community. It was an effort to find and to highlight the significant issues between where we're at with local funding and bring them some level of a future structural issue. The committee's view very strong and 11 up at once. Fixing the T fund and they're they're and like what we mentioned, the purchasing use effort doesn't by any way automatically drive that help to the towns and municipalities that have their issues. So we are also trying to drive the conversation towards help for town highway aid. And that's our effort when the bill came out. That was amended. There is a one time transfer of money to Town Highway for 1,700,000,000.0 in the bill that comes over. That was not done in our committee. That was done in Ways and Means amendment, and that came out of the TIP Bond Fund. The committee was looking for a long term structural. There was other things at play. The committee did vote with the amendment, but it is a one time fund of $1,700,000 versus the effort to go to a long term piece. Those are the two biggest changes that happened in the Ways and Means Amendment and one that in effect became our bill to you. So that's why I wanted to highlight those pieces there.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I'm wondering how you see this discussion going and if we're gonna go through section by section with the chair or

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We're kind of what gonna go through section by section, Damian. We ran out of time this morning.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So if we wanted to ask a specific question of the chair on a section,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: is it appropriate to ask that question?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I I think he's here. That's what we I had hoped that we were going to be done by, like, quarter after ten this morning, and it didn't happen.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: It didn't happen. Well, I'm trying to pull up I had well, first of all, thank you so much for your hard work on this. I definitely see that your committee spent considerable I had two interns who intermittently were in your room if you had noticed Isabelle or Zoe at any point. So I had copious notes on the creation of this bill and the internal debates we had as a committee. So I appreciate the work that you did because clearly there was some, like, hard fought battles on either side. So I guess my first question would be overall in the project book, it's pretty obvious that we are delaying very important significant local projects. There's a couple in my district. I know Sarah Harrison has noted a few in hers. I'm wondering if your committee dug into that question at all. Did you talk about how to reprioritize? What were the conversations about the prioritization of projects and the funding loss and delay of local projects?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: I think it's a great question because the most amount of time spent on the committee is a $33,000,000 hole that we started in at the budget and I would reference that we spent a long time on particularly the CFO's testimony from the agency on how the shortfall of the 33,000,000 was filled. We spent on this particular presentation memo that started January 21, very early in the session. We spent a significant amount of time on this and you will find the $6,000,000 in delays and projects that went over. You'll find a discussion about the $8,000,000 reduction in forest savings. You will spend or learn a little bit about what indirect and learn a lot about indirect cost rate. That's substantial and that's going to be ongoing moving forward, which committee spent a long time on that piece. That $32,000,000 hole was filled and then the $10,000,000 from the purchase and use piece was done to maximize and leverage federal funds and to increase the amount of paving activity and other projects. So the projects that were rolled out of the project book were not replaced by the additional revenue from the purchasing. They were not the same projects.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Exactly. So

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: we did spend some time on that but with the amount of prioritization piece that they have in the building of the white book, we heard from a chief engineer multiple multiple times in our committee and they had some really difficult significant choices to make and I think that there's also you'll spend your time and spend time on the whole issue related to ebbs and flows. If we drop, if we increase or decrease paving as it was going or decrease the barriers and then it comes back up and then it comes back down, how do they prepare and plan and how do vendors manage off that? Those are all big concerns. The same time also that bridge maintenance we heard regularly is to keep up with it. It's far harder to catch up if bridges fall behind than it is to catch up when roads fall behind. That is, So we spent some significant time on that and particularly the testimony from the CFO related to how that budget bill was done.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Did you discuss revenue sources and outside of the Governor's proposal considerations that we heard? We've had what three different reports at this point related to options that we could explore including indexing the gas tax, looking at I can pull a report out, but there are multiple studies that have been done to look at other revenue sources we could consider. Did your committee take up that study this year or discuss any of those other revenue sources?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Being the second year of the biennium, I can say that last year we spent significant time on the revenue side of We took the next money from I always back up. We do have mileage based user feed in this year's.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: But it's revenue neutral as written, and it's also not likely to improve revenue even in the next five years. So it's it's a revenue neutral

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: That may be. But to answer your question of did we consider them? Would say, yes. We did. And then there is an increase in there. There is a fee. But I would say that I'm trying to couch earlier comments that it doesn't bring revenues to the T funds fast enough in the changes. So that part is certainly to understand where you're coming from. We spent significant amount of time from retail delivery fee to gas tax index to registration fees to oh, I have to remember. It's like

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: a specialty fee.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: We went through every piece of that the last two reports last year trying to highlight the challenges facing the T Fund, but I would say that as, and we also spent some significant time looking at, what was the Kaiser bill and the steps on the purchase and use piece and, the governor's recommend to, again, was in the miscellaneous tax bill, but it was recommended a step process and that's not included inside it. If the step was five years to reduce the amount of purchasing use going to education, the bills from this house take step one and they will be kind of a change the more structurally. We'll no longer say two thirds, one third if you pass the same bill, there'll be 27, sorry 73.7. But there are no, there was an escalator on the merchandise on the Milo Space User Fee. There was an escalator, an evictilation escalator that we did remove from the Governor's recommend. And the committee discussion was pretty significant that if we do not have an escalator for, we do, there is a gas tax escalator related to the price of gas, but not to overall inflation. So this was related to overall inflation so we did remove it as a committee. Okay. There are outside of those there are no fee or tax

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: increases to the bill.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, well thank you for that explanation and also for explaining the MBUF conversation because we've spent a lot of time on MBUF already kind of in advance of receiving the bill and then I think just for our own information. And we, I think, come to the conclusion that we would like to see the MBUF be on all vehicles eventually. And so we've discussed like, would you index one and not index the other, the Gas X versus the MBUF? And it sounds like you're committing to the conclusion that you'd have to do both or you'd have to do neither to have quality.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: There was some pretty significant discussion about that it's good policy to have an escalator on the fees and that there was a lot of support for the governor's rank, but not enough.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thanks. So the position of the House in the overall, you think it would be fair to say that the house examined we have a short term problem. We have a problem between now and pretty much the next five years. We have a longer term problem, but we have a particular problem that the governor chose to do purchasing use. What I hear you say is that between your committee, Ways and Means, and the House as a whole, you all researched all sorts of different options for in the immediate to deal with getting revenue this year. And the house settled on a one year solution and it was purchased in use. And but you did look at all sorts of other options.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: We have spent significant time on multiple options and we are, have been very focused on the transportation fund, short term and long term issues. We are also trying very much to bring the town highway structure issues to the forefront as well. But as far as being able to say what the solutions are going to be beyond one year at a time, We clawed back the j everybody worked hard to claw back the JTAG transfer, and that helped. And now we're looking at another clause piece that we're gonna we're gonna be back at our perspective from the house would be that we'll be right back at this next year trying to fall off.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So would it be fair to say and that that it's not solved. The the difference between the governor's proposal and purchase and use and the house's proposal is the out years, but this year you both agreed that roughly 10,000,000 that the governor put there's some agreement that purchase and use is a place that you both look favorably on to at least in this first year deal with new revenue. There's a

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: lot of sentiment to that five year step plan that the governors recommend, but in order to we settled on one year step this year. No

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Andy I have the other things.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: I just wondered if the committee took straw poll on the ways and means amendment or did you report on the floor on the hearing committees? The ways and means amendment to our bill? Yeah. We did take a straw poll on it. Was seven to four. 74 pro. We support the Ways and Means Amendment. However, we didn't hear that or take that straw poll until after it had passed waves and means and appropriations and to come on the floor. So

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: we're in a public transit crisis right now with the inability of older Vermonters. Saw with GMT, we saw the shutdown of some of their services that's now been kind of recropped out. I'm talking about the rides. I don't know if you remember at the beginning of the year, there was testimony at the local level in I think Chitney County, but I'm not sure. I believe it was Senator Brennan's District perhaps as well, where there was disabled Vermonters who were essentially being denied access to their workplace, to social gatherings because of budget shortfalls. And although it appears that there's been like a short term influx of cash to that problem, It's not going away. And if I'm mischaracterizing, please correct me, Senator Brennan. But did your committee consider funding public transit in a more appropriate way or a more sustainable way? And how did you look at that as a topic for the T Bill?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: I appreciate the question, Senator White. I would say that crisis is a word that's used significantly in this building. There's a over $5,000,000 increase in public transit spending than the governor's recommend for this year over last year. That's a pretty significant portion of the money. That's $58,000,000 There's also a significant rework going on with the providers of rural taking over some of the services and putting Green Mountain Transit in a focus on their urban area, which we heard in testimony, which we'd heard from Green Mountain Transit multiple times, well as RCT. And that transition is going well, that they're focusing on their strengths. There's also language in the bill that was asked by Green Mountain Transit to make it more clear that it was very much their responsibility to move beyond just levitating the towns for their portion of contribution, but to look at every institution and opportunity and fundraising across the particular lines. The needs and wants and services of Chitin County and particularly up and down the two major routes may be different than the needs in the rural areas of Vermont. It's still in the testimony we heard that we're one of the highest funding, if not the highest funding transit in a rural state in America. So our level is much much higher than almost every other model that we've seen. So I do believe there's still more work to be done but I very much appreciate the recognition that Green Mountain Transit takes on that anything they come back to the house with will involve some effort to report on their ridership levels and everything they've done on every route to increase that ridership level. I don't think that we can take down the public transit infrastructure any further than it is. There's a certain level of bare bones, but growing it from here has to involve a level of commitment to the ridership and understanding what we're delivering for services. And I think that the communication with the committee was huge on that with Green Mountain Transit and the language I found we found as a committee incredibly positive recognizing their need to drive up readership, ridership, and and approach every institution on every route and every workplace to look at how they're going to put and service the needs of people.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, well that's that's very hard.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: I thought that was encouraging. And that's great. There was another public transit forum and discussion on Monday that, I think four of our committee members were at, either in person or in Zoom that, we don't wanna see it go any further in cuts, there has to be an understanding of how it grows forward and where that falls and coming for more state money without a plan to drive ridership up is not where they're headed now. I feel good about that.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Well, that is really heartening to hear actually. I know that you took significant amount of time on that topic. So thank you for that. I haven't spent a lot of time with the language you have in your bill. So I won't comment on that, but it's certainly something that, I have lots of notes from my interns on that you So talked clearly, a well trodden path. And then I just have one final question. This is our point.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I know we would have had more time. Okay. So my last question relates to, and you'll be shocked, bikes and bike and pedestrian funding. How did your committee handle that? What were the conversations? Did you see that as a place to cut in the T bill to reduce costs or did you see that as a place to grow? Where would you say this bill stands if I was, let's say, a big bike advocate in Vermont?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: If you were a big bike advocate, then I would point you to sections 10 through 13, particularly in the effort. There is a transportation alternative language that we changed in there, we put into the bill that will give more flexibility to the agency in terms of getting money out on these transportation alternative projects, some of which revolve around water quality. Money is in the same bin, but the water quality challenge projects in terms of massively increase for Salches and everything else. There were limitations on the amount of money that was given per grant. There was limitations in each piece and we've made some changes to there to try to make sure that we maximize out those pieces and bike and ped is already weighted in that program piece. So the opportunity to support that, although not with an additional transfer of funds should look at an opportunity that might fund more projects in Bike Federina than it would it previously was. There's been some changes there that we also sort of put in the sunset so that after we make sure that we don't miss the opportunity on some of this federal money that's been in the coffers for a couple of years, that it will return to the limits that were

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: there before. Well, you. Those were my big highlights. I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: wanna be, this is a little difficult because I think there was a difference in where committees are, but in the House and different positions. I want to get back to talk about the drop in purchase and use and where it is, and I need to focus for me a little bit around the paving piece. Do you think in the overall, we're at 140 odd million in paving this year. That drops about in half next year. The plan, and that happened, it's happening in the estimates from the agency for a number of reasons, partly federal money, partly match, and across the board, it is the one year that is coming across, do you think, and I don't know how to ask this tactfully, but do you think the house as a whole gets where we are in that clip by only appropriating one year's worth of money.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Mr. Chair, I would say that the testimony from the pavers makes it pretty clear that ups and downs, peaks and valleys, is much more difficult to manage than a consistency year by year. I think that also the testimony would say that we're not hitting the numbers that we would need to hit to keep the infrastructure where the ratings will be acceptable to the monitors in the long term. There was not any push in the committee to substantially redirect the governor's recommend in any way.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: There's some concern in here. We've done a little digging around paving. That in the paving budget itself, we've got three twenty five miles of interstate, and the paving budget includes 92 miles of paving for interstates. We've got roughly, it's well north, it's north of 2,500 miles. I think it would be around 2,700 miles of state highway system. And there's 55 miles worth of paving. Did your committee or did the House spend time on that split and the difficulty here and there. We've spent some time trying to figure out where it is, and on the state highway system, that's that's know, we're repaving state highway system every forty five to fifty years if you held that. Did you guys spend, did your committee spend time on that issue?

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Mr. Chair, we did spend some time on that. I think that the context of the conversation would be driven out of everything going back to the $33,000,000 hole. Everything goes back to needing additional T fund money. And I think that when you look at the interstate at ninetyten, I think it was understood that to it or at least it was viewed that we needed to maximize the most amount of people that we could that could be done to produce the most amount of work that would not keep of the drop of where it was the year before. I think that your point is incredibly valid and I certainly looking forward to hearing about where the Senate thinks that we should go at that level. But when you're looking at starting as far behind as we were and maximizing the most amount of activity, I can understand to a certain degree that the committee felt that that is where we're at. Would characterize it in the short time that I've been sitting in this that is a clawing situation one year after the other without

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: long term structural funding. When you

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: see them pull out the amount of projects they did to put back in, the amount of work to do and then Washington when you take the testimony on how the budget was built we as a committee welcome any new long term fix that will be able to dig deeper into that conversation. Think the committee felt that they maximized the most amount of work they could get done with a limited amount of funds that were there.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I just thought, and I wanna be respectful, and I know you guys worked really hard. The disappointing team were and I'm gonna speak for myself only. Not only are we in the one year creating problems for ourselves, whether you go outside, whether it be public transit or, you know, for re paving in particular, and really generally across all of the agency and buildings, we aren't meeting the mark In any number of divisions, we're not meeting the mark. A one year fix is that is doesn't cover everything is difficult, but when I can't see going forward any fix to anything going out, it's worrisome. I

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: think that I think we find that most people would certainly understand that concern. I think that you also find that in the committee there's a pretty significant support for the agency build of their budget. I think we find that the House Committee is 11 on hold two years in a row and last year was 100% government recommended and this year it's 99.992. The committee is very much focused on changes in incremental pieces of policy related around issues like what Senator White highlighted. All of those issues feel they made incremental progress in and I think I think it would be fair to say that the committee spends a significant amount again with the chief highway engineer and others understanding how they built their budget and we're anxious to hear what you might do for changes. But committee's pretty steadfastly behind the governors recommending the work that they are facing the challenges they're at but I think that they will certainly be open to whatever it is that you'll be coming back with. So I appreciate the highlighting the shared unanimous vision or word is we have a transportation funding problem that limits our ability to do everything we'd like to do, but we also have a town highway problem that is right behind it that needs to be as understood. That every challenge that the agency faces, our towns face with increased construction costs and all of the post COVID world of inflation and their buying power.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would say the difficulty piece for me is when you look across all of the agents and you look at the different divisions, there's really nobody that's really so healthy that you can move money from here to there and not feel like you're doing someone a disservice. So and and it gets back to overall a whole bit. And if I

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: can quickly add, we didn't have one of those light winners where there's more money and maintenance to do more district leveling and more work than there was previously. Potentially, we'll see where that I'm sorry.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: No, thank you. So I'm just talking about the impacts of transportation other than just the roads, right? We had this committee and your committee was part of it, worked with the health and welfare committees to look at the impact of transportation on our healthcare. I thought that was really a great exercise and it actually has resulted in funding and better mechanisms that didn't require funding. Does your committee talk about impact to things like economic development regarding transportation? Because there are so many impacts from transportation that are not in our transportation official definition. So I think that's something that's really critical is just the impact of the state in other ways, especially in economic development.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Senator, I think that there are two or three committee members that are planning oriented and speak a great deal in relationship to project that's coming through where the wrong standards are almost redone and they spent a fair amount of time in that area and there's a significant talk about how land use and transportation and building going together and about services that should or shouldn't be allowed or shouldn't happen in those areas. So I think of the rep that sits right in a similar spot that is a champion of that area. We do and we took, if you allow me a quick sec, we did spend, we took a tour of the state through the regional planning commissions this year. We brought every single regional planning commission in to sit in the chair. I'm sitting with thinking this way, where are we gonna sit up? Yeah, yeah. And we brought and heard from every regional planning commission in the state this year about their concerns and about how transportation interacts with their community. A huge issue relating to the livability of their communities, walkability of their communities, which drove our activity around the changes in the transportation alternatives. Also in that you'll see there's a request that we felt that the agency needs to revisit issues related to how grants are issued, but also in the area of speed limits and how it impacts the town's ability to impact their livability and whatnot. That's in there about an effort to make sure that that's revisited and come back. There's six different scenarios of speed limit and ways to be on the standard can't be changed and looked at and we feel there needs to be a review on that especially relationship to the idea where the tiers are coming in and interacting with that. And lastly I'd say that it was amazing how consistent the testimony was from the regional planning commissions and I'm I thought that was nice to hear from a different level than what we go out to get to hear from the committee.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Great. Thank you. Appreciate that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Other questions? Andy Scott. What? You gotta go? Yeah. Got a meeting. Okay. So at this point, thank you for coming. We're we totally appreciate how difficult this is. You for your responsibility.

[Rep. Walker (Chair, House Transportation Committee)]: Mr. Chairman and the committee, I very much appreciate the full amount of time and energy that I got. That is substantially more than I received than any of the other House committees in the So other I appreciate the chance to discuss the T Bill in far greater depth than I have been anywhere else.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. I would just say, do you think, is it possible that the committee could meet at 08:45 in your morning?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I usually have an eight to nine, but

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: it's only fifteen minutes.