Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: You're live.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: This is Senate Transportation. This is Wednesday, April, and we are here with Damian Leonard, and we are going to go through house passed.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Morning. I'm Damian Leonard from the office of legislative council. I start by apologizing for being a few minutes late this morning. The in front of you is the t bill as passed by the house. I'm gonna fly through this at, like, a 45,000 foot level. That's exactly what and we'll come if we'll come back to everything and I'm gonna go through it about like that with Michelle, but maybe a 20,000.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. I'm gonna write my questions down then.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep. That would be good.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Alright. So section one is the standard adoption of the transportation program as amended. There are no amendments to it in this bill, but or in the as passed by the house version. But it's the standard adoption of the transportation program language together with definitions for the bill. Okay. Section two repeals a set of obsolete rules. The former municipal heavy equipment loan funds was administered by the transportation board. It switched over to being administered by the treasurer's office a few years back. It's now called the municipal equipment and vehicle loan funds. These rules are obsolete but still on the books. This is repealing them. Section three updates the state's policy regarding highways and bridges to reflect that we currently have state design standards and guidance. And so it's maintain those. And then it updates the language relating warning signage to reflect what's in the manual uniform traffic control devices, which is what the state follows. So that's the federal manual that makes sure that Vermont and California and every other state in between use the same signs on the road for the same purposes. Section four, this allows the secretary of transportation to waive, bonding requirements for two different purposes. The first in subdivision eight is related to fulfillment of the terms of the bond. The second in subdivision nine is related to payment of things like insurance, unemployment contributions, taxes, etcetera. And there are two instances when this allows a waiver. The first is expanding existing law, which allows a waiver for contracts of a 100,000 or less to 250,000 or less. And the second is during an emergency event. It allows the secretary to waive bonding requirements for immediate temporary stabilization work related to public safety or state infrastructure. Permanent work to actually repair that infrastructure would, still need to go through bonding requirements if it's for more than 250,000. Moving on to section five. This this language brings us into compliance with the National Bridge Inspection Standards. It's important to note that this essentially reflects what the current practices are, but it puts in the statute that the state can require a municipality to post or close its bridge if the state determines that the structure is deficient or in danger of collapse under a heavy load or something like that, and also sets out requirements around who's responsible for paying and does create a new penalty of a thousand dollars for violating the posting or closure of a bridge. So if a bridge says max two ton or four ton and you drive your 15 ton tractor trailer over it, this is one of multiple penalties that can be assessed against you. So that that's

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Oh, no. Hold it. Yeah. Is it is it assessed against the municipality or is it assessed against the person driving?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It's assessed against the violator.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. Not the municipality. So this is a penalty for a person who violates a bridge posting or closure by municipality or the agency.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So if the municipality or the agency has posted or closed the bridge under this section and you violate that, so close bridge and you drive over it, they can issue you a fine of thousand dollars. Plus if there are other bridge weight, width, height, and length requirements that are set in statute. There's a very lengthy chapter on this. They can issue fines under those if you also violate those.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Why would you drive across a closed bridge considering it? A posted bridge. A posted bridge. Yeah. More like this.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Sounds sad. And it's imagined to the covered bridges. Well I

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: mean, that's a whole conversation.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's a whole conversation, but I mean, I'm just thinking if you're in construction or something, I and you end up 50 feet down in the well Yeah. Anyways, yeah, let me go. Yeah.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sorry. I'm thinking of the opening to Beetlejuice when they go through the covered bridge.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Correct.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But yes. Section six is adding a traffic violation for violation of a posting breach posting or closure. It looks like there are a lot of changes here. The changes in Subdivisions 11 And 12 are just stylistic changes. They are not changing the substance. It's just making it consistent with the rest of the section. Section seven changes the membership of the public transit advisory council. In Subdivision eight, the community of Vermont elders is being replaced by AARP Vermont because COVID dissolved. In section nine, a position which has gone unfilled that was supposed to be filled by a representative of private bus operators and taxi services is being repealed. And in section 10, the representative of Vermont intercity bus operators is being replaced by Vermont private bus operators since the intercity bus operators are private entities. In section eight, this is an amendment to the Green Mountain Transit Authority's charter. It allows them in their budget their proposed budget to include, in addition to revenues from fares and other sources, anticipated voluntary local match contributions, grants, donations, and other non assessment revenues that may be offered by a member municipality or another source. So this is important if there's, for example, a project and there's a local match. This allows the municipality to say, we'll cover half the local match if you cover the other half or something like that. And then it clarifies later on in that section that this is not going to change anyone's base assessment. So this is, it's essentially allowing them to budget for additional revenue sources if they can find them and pursue those revenue sources. Section nine extends the agency's public private partnership authority by three years from this coming July 1 to 07/01/2029. The agency can speak to this more. My understanding is they have a public private partnership project, say that 10 times fast, that they may be looking to pursue in the next couple of years.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Okay. Could

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: be to find out more, maybe Michelle.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Better for the agency to speak to. Section 10 is the powers and duties of the transportation board. This is narrowing the parties who can appeal section eleven eleven permit. So I think as all of you know, a section eleven eleven permit relates to any work that you're having done in the right of way. This could be a driveway, etcetera. So it's limiting it to the applicant or the permittee. What the board has seen in recent years is that land use disputes are spilling over into this even though the board does not have jurisdiction over the land use permit. And the issues of the actual land use development don't necessarily go to the driveway permit. So they can speak to this more, but they're concerned about this becoming an additional venue to try to delay development rather than focusing on the permit or signage. I leave this to you. So I see different looks around the table, and I'm not the person to ask questions. I'm about the backgrounds here. I'm just

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: running through some people kinda write their questions down. And

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Section 11 is transportation alternatives grant program. We're doing a couple of things in this section or the couple of things are happening here. One, the maximum grant allocation is increasing from $300,000 to $600,000 going forward. It has temporarily been at $600,000 since 2024, and this is making that permanent. And then beginning in the coming fiscal year, it is removing the 50% set aside for environmental mitigation projects relating to stormwater and highways. Okay. And instead, opening the funds to any eligible activity, including environmental mitigation projects, as well as infrastructure related projects and systems that will provide safe routes for non drivers. All of these are covered already under the program. What they've experienced is that they had a number of salt shed projects that canceled, and these are use them or lose them federal funds. And so they wanna ensure that they can award those projects out. And that's also reflected in section 12, which amends section law. So I mentioned earlier that we have temporarily increased the maximum grant to 600,000. This will increase it for fiscal year twenty twenty seven to 1,200,000.0 to allow them to get the funds out the door so we don't lose them. Section 13 requires continuing consultation between the agency, the League of Cities and Towns, and the Association of Planning and Development Agencies. You'll remember last year, we had a couple of studies in our in the T Bill. One related to the requirements for cancellation of locally managed projects. The other related to an evaluation of the potential for streamlining the administration of town highway aid and municipal grant programs. The House Transportation Committee was wanted to see more out of that work, and so they've asked the agency to continue working with the League of Cities and Towns and the Association of Planning and Development Agencies on those two here. So that's Subdivisions 1 And 2. Subdivision 3 is new, and this asked the agency in consultation with the League of Cities and Towns and the planning and development agencies to examine provisions in Vermont law related to procedures for establishing speed limits and to identify opportunities to simplify and clarify those provisions to assist municipalities in meeting local needs, including safety and context sensitivity. This stems out of two things. One, there are, depending on your municipality, there are six potential ways to set speed limits in the municipality, some of which have no procedural requirements other than legislative body approval and others which require engineering studies and so forth. The other is concern that with our recent changes to zoning laws, there are certain designations that get enhanced authority, and there's concern to that in some of the smaller municipalities. Some of the streamlining could be helpful for them to set speed limits, but there's also concern about should we have parameters? Because the current streamlined authority just lets any speed limit be set no matter how low. So you could have a five mile an hour speed limit, etcetera. These are all policy discussions, but they're asking to streamline and clarify so that we have a more clear process instead of having to figure out what destination you are and whether that applies and then do I need to do an engineering study, etcetera.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So it doesn't actually allow because I got in contact with somebody saying they thought the language allowed the town to low and

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: to speed limit on their impairments. It simplifies the process. It could potentially. They're supposed to come back with recommendations for legislative action next January. Currently, the towns could lower that speed limit if they meet certain zoning and land use designations.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And do a traffic stop.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: If you meet the zoning and land use designations, a traffic study is not required. Otherwise, a traffic study is required, and there are parameters with a minimum speed limit of 25.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We're trying to go through this. Okay. And if you've got questions, write them down because we're we're gonna put Michelle in in the in the chair. And all of those areas that are easy, we're gonna just put okay by, but if this section is one we're gonna have to ask some testimonials. Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I'm gonna ask you many questions.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Well, I want to get done what we can get done and focusing on the ones that we really have questions. Right.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sections fourteen and fifteen were the pilot fund language that chair Walker alluded to yesterday in his testimony. They were deleted by the Ways and Means Committee, so that's why they show as deleted. Section 16 is a one time $192,000 appropriation to support the Agency of Transportation's partnership with Drive Electric Vermont. This is a reduction from last year's appropriation of $325,000. In section 17, this relates to authority that was granted in 2023 for the sale of the Caledonia County State Airport is deleting a requirement that the agency ensure that the airport continues to be identified as a public use airport within the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems until at least 2050. Apparently, this had been a a sticking point with the FAA, and Michelle can speak to this more. But my understanding is that it would be the airport would no longer be within that national plan, but would actually provide better facilities because of the anticipated investments from the buyer that the state is currently negotiating once. So this this is a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: question for you. You guys spent a lot of time on this. Right?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Well, yeah. We've done the original authorization. Yes.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: section 18 also extends that authorization through 11/01/2027. It currently expires, in one month. So important to note, if this bill does not move prior to May 1, we will need a retroactive effective date for this because otherwise, the language will have been repealed.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Oh. So it's just the effective date? That's

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're going to we're going to need to make this retroactive and effective if the bill doesn't move across the finish line before the May or before the April. Excuse me. Section 19, I'm going to, pass over this. This is the mileage based user page since we're gonna spend a lot of time on that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Spend the rest of the morning.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We can skip ahead to the end of the bill, actually, at this point. Rest of the bill relates to mileage based user fee, and this is the house proposal. The effective dates, apply a 01/01/2027 effective date to the mileage based user fee. The remaining sections are 07/01/2026. As I mentioned, we'll need to add a retroactive effective date, assuming that this bill won't make it across the finish line by the April. But it could Thanks.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: If you could follow your questions right now.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, can I start going through them or?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No, we're gonna move on to the mileage may choose your feet and then we're gonna put Michelle in the chair after that and we'll close. We'll be be next to the stuff that you guys don't think we need a lot of, and the other pieces that we have lots of questions on that she can't answer. We'll get other people in here. Okay,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: so when are we going to discuss that?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: After get, he and Patrick get through talking about mileage

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: of Right.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The whole backside of this is my own space based shoes would be Yeah.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Still running. So now we're going to the new. Yes. Okay. New? Yes. The 1.3. There's two.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. So this is 1.3. It should say h nine forty four mileage based user fee, senate working draft for discussion.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, wow. I didn't see that.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. That came in literally five minutes before I got here.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: And this is with you. Okay. Yep.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So, and Patrick, are you there?

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: There he is.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And you've got the draft?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: Yes. I received the draft.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Perfect. And have you gone through the draft?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: I'm in the middle of going through it right now. I I received. Yep, for the record, Patrick Murphy, state policy director for the Agency of Transportation. Damien sent one draft last night, and now there's an updated draft for this morning.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Where are these drafts coming from? Like, are they are you requesting these? Or where are they coming from the agency? Who's where does this draft come from?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Do you want to talk

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: to After Mr. We've all talked and we've had this is kind of to get us started, and I, sit down yesterday afternoon and said, here's the things we talked about. If this doesn't reflect it, we're gonna, this is meant to be we're gonna get to do we agree with this? Do we not? What how do we wanna change? This is this is and this is mileage based user fee, electric cars, and moving on.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I guess I just okay. So this is for me. Much.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So, yeah, the the chair asked me to prepare an updated draft that included some of the things that the committee has talked about

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Oh, great.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And included expanding timeline for expansion to other vehicles. And so this is a first attempt at that. I'm expecting to have lots of notes in here after we get through it. Yep. And, yeah, to to be entirely fair to Patrick, he got the first draft last night. It got sent at 06:10. I don't know what time he saw it. I know he probably was eating dinner Aw. And didn't have a chance to read it then. And then the second draft, literally, probably 08:45 this morning, if he was if he saw it as soon as it got sent. So the the please be patient. Yeah. So there we've been working hard to get this out because of your condensed timeline. So the the first section is a new findings and intent section, and this is hopefully reflective of the discussion in the committee. So it starts by identifying that gasoline and diesel fuel taxes were originally intended to serve as user fees that would require motor vehicles to contribute to the transportation fund in amount that was roughly equivalent to each vehicle's usage of the highways. Improvements in energy efficiency and widespread adoption of hybrid, plug in hybrid, and battery electric vehicles have caused many vehicles to no longer contribute to the transportation fund in an amount that reflects their usage of Vermont's highways, making the current system inequitable.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would also add in here, efficiency in combustion engines has created great variation in what they would contribute. Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna add some suggestions to wording in this.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I think But I love your findings now.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's something you I think think now is a good time to start getting those out so he can incorporate it.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Yeah. So don't worry. Yes.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Please feel free to either send me send me a markup or send me comments or speak to me. Mark

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: talk right now.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Or talk right now if if you have things off the top of

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: your head.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So you're on section you've just gone to section three of this.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I was about to get to number three.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay, so I would just start in section one. I would say the amount that is roughly equivalent to each vehicle's usage of Vermont's highways. That sentence, I don't fully understand what it means. If you're talking wear and tear, why are large trucks heavy vehicles? Why? That leads me to a different conclusion. You know, like that. So I'm wondering, is it supposed to be roughly equivalent of each vehicle's usage? Is that just the amount of miles that each vehicle is traveling? Or is that the weight of that vehicle, like how much it's impacting? Is it the different you you know, like,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: guess So I I deliberately did not say wear and tear Okay. Toyota Corolla with regular winter tires versus a toy Toyota Corolla with studded tires has a different wear and tear impact. Fully loaded truck has a different wear and tear impact than a light duty vehicle. So, yes, usage is intended to reflect actual travel on the roads, understanding that the there is

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: I think our issue is that the revenues from the gas tax are no longer sufficient to handle.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That is addressed later in the process.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: But if this was truly usage, trucks would be included and it would

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: be very difficult. I think most of what we're talking about so far is pleasure vehicles.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Correct, I understand, but that's a choice that we're making. We are going to talk about usage, really should at least mention trucks so that we're not saying that this is going to solve all the problems. So,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: additional vehicles including, medium and heavy duty electric vehicles are mentioned later in about 20 pages.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh. They they are not

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: mentioned in the findings. Okay. If if there is a finding that you would like made about that current system's inability to actually reflect actual wear and tear, and, you know, mileage based user fee won't reflect actual wear and tear either, I'm I'm happy to make those changes. So, like I said, this is a first draft. So but please do feel free to get me your comments, and I'll try to incorporate everything into a finding that, hopefully, the committee can get behind. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I guess maybe

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Understanding too that these are these are the findings and intent, not necessarily the meat of the bill.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: But but I will say, like, UBM used our intent when they did their work. Like, they took language that we use to do all of that work. So it does Yeah.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Your your findings and intent do have weight. Yeah. But first, from a legal standpoint, the heaviest weight is the plain language that's on the page actually enacting the program. If there's ambiguity in that, then we look to intent statements to try to figure out what you all meant when we're five years down the road looking at rules that have been adopted or something like that or how the program's being implemented. So that's that's worth noting. Just from a legal standpoint, I understand that there are other reasons to have findings and intent because it's a good way to communicate with the public. Often this is what people will will look at first when they're trying to understand the bill. Finding three is proposed as a mileage based user fee, charges a per mile fee for usage of the state's highways and ensures that vehicles contribute to the transportation fund in an equitable manner. Again, this could be tweaked. I First draft. Vermont's taxes on gasoline and on diesel fuel were last increased in 2014.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I do like that. I like that.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That is a that is a factual statement.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yes. Could we throw in the federal debt tax? The federal gas tax into that one too? And the last time the federal gas tax was increased was

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's up to you. It doesn't have bearing on the state's transportation fund, but

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: it's up

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: If the federal government raised the gas tax and was able to properly distribute more funding, we wouldn't be in a whole other way that we are. If they could reduce the mat, I mean, like, there's all sorts of things that they could do to make state budgets better, so I don't want to call them if we can.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And also the impact on the driver, they haven't had any things in the tax.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: My pitch. Because I think it was, like, nineteen

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Ninety something? '93. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I haven't got any problems making a factual statement about that. I've made

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: a note. Thank you.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Improving fuel efficiency and increasing hybrid, plug in hybrid and BEV adoption are leading to reduced fuel consumption.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I think that's kinda what you were saying earlier. That might be too

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: BEV's do not purchase any fuel, and the $89 annual infrastructure fee is less than the average amount of fuel taxes collected for a light duty vehicle with an internal combustion engine. So this is factual. Again, you may wanna tweak it if it doesn't reflect.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So No. It's we consistent in this when we talk about motor vehicle? Because mostly what we're talking about here is light duty vehicle all the way through this. Mhmm. So should we be consistent in the in the tunnel? Sure.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Well, so

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: I I actually would like to go through all of it before we have a lot of comments, but but just, like, the car doesn't purchase. You know, it's the driver of

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: the car.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Just I'll have pity stuff like that. Sure. Yeah. But that's that's of stuff I wanna wait.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Reduced fuel consumption and unchanged gasoline and diesel tax rates have resulted in stagnant fuel tax revenues that have not kept pace with inflation. In addition to Vermont's stagnant fuel tax revenues, Vermont's demographic constraints have limited the growth in fee revenues to the transportation fund. The July 2025 consensus revenue forecast estimates a 1.33% compound annual growth rate in transportation fund revenues between 2026 and 2030. In comparison, highway construction costs as measured by the National Highway Construction Cost Index have increased by 62% nationally since 2020.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Again,

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: if there's something missing, those are the 10 that I put together, but I'm happy to add more in next week. Those are good. It is the intent of the general assembly to implement a mileage based user fee for battery electric vehicles, which will replace the existing infrastructure fee beginning on 01/01/2027 to ensure that BEVs contribute to the transportation fund in an amount that reflects the annual miles traveled by each vehicle.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I just, you know, replaced the existing infrastructure fee. Well That's fine. Go ahead.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Because that's registration? Is that what you you want that?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Was the registration. That's specific to registration. But I when we made those statements, I wanna say generally, so all vehicles, we get to the place regardless of where they are.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So number two is is the intent of the general assembly to gradually expand the mileage mix user fee to other light duty vehicles so that by 01/01/2031, all light duty vehicles contribute to the transportation fund in an amount that reflects the annual miles traveled by each vehicle. And number three is to develop and implement the mileage based user fee in a manner that supports Vermont's climate goals and does not discourage ownership and use of BEVs on highly fuel efficient vehicles.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: That's my favorite one so far.

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Could we we make it we don't have climate goals. We have a global warming solutions act that has requirements of us as a state. So I'm wondering if you can kind of workshop that away from climate goals to referencing. We have specific things in the Global Warming Solutions Act related to requirements that we need to meet. And maybe it's even referencing the sections of the climate action plan if we want to get super specific because we do, we have targets that we're supposed to meet.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sure. I I put a note in there, and I will touch base with Ellen Chetkowski and Ryan Lopez, who's our internal expert on those. That's the person who drafted us.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Add some Ellen magic to this. That would really

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Ellen magic. I'm gonna have to tell her that that's what it's being called. Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: We're gonna discuss all this stuff.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, this is meant to as a starting

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. So now we get into the initial mileage based user fee. So this is the 01/01/2027 mileage based user fee. It's important to note that because there will be a 01/01/2029 and a 01/01/2031 up off later in this draft. So the purpose of the chapter is to impose a mileage based user fee for battery electric vehicles, battery electric vehicle pleasure cars to ensure that they contribute to the transportation fund in an amount that reflects annual miles traveled. The definitions are relatively self explanatory. Annual vehicle miles traveled means total miles that is to be be determined during a mileage reporting period, which I think I've mentioned to this committee earlier, is either your time, your annual period between inspections, or, it is the time between an inspection and a terminating event, which is, registering in a different state, change of ownership, or end of a lease, or, terminating the registration of your vehicle for one reason or another. The see. I think those are the key definitions there that I just covered, the three key ones in that explanation, which are my annual mileage reporting period.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Can I just ask that we so they changed it in ways it means away from a mileage plate, just the words mileage based user fee to the a rock? They or are we gonna have to do all of that too? Because it seems like we're saying a different word than what

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: they wanted. The mileage based user fee was kept in. The chapter was called road usage charges or RUCs.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Because they also had a 1% charge on the rental fee for a rental EV.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The that is left out of this draft. There's a policy question for the committee as to whether you want to add that language back in after discussing the cost to implement versus what you would actually get from, I believe, the estimate was 27 rental EVs in the state.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I know. So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: it's it's not currently not a lot of money, but it could be

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But the administrative cost to collect it, I don't wanna spend a $100,000 to collect 2 pennies on a few cars.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Also, no one has all of these vehicles are registered in other states.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Well, this is to avoid that issue of registration.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Oh.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So it's when you rent the car at Burlington Airport on it, it would be 1% of your rental charge for the car. And that's to avoid simply saying on the registration because then, you know, your car is registered in Ohio where they don't have a mileage based user fee. And then

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: But if we took that up, would we have to change all of our definitions to make it a rock instead of a mileage based user fee?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the way I way I wrote it, the mileage based user fee stayed the same, but they it just became a sub chapter within a road usage charges chapter.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. I see what you mean. Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. I I try to avoid making additional work for myself when I don't have to. So that

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Well, thank you. Is that

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: is an example of that. Try to keep it simple. So $43.00 3 has changed from any prior drafts that you've seen. What I did here is, I tried to make it more clear, and simplified. So the first in in subsection a, this is the real meat of how you would pay the mileage based user fee. So subdivision one is the options for payment. The owner or lessee of an electric vehicle can elect to pay the MBUF according to one of the following options. There are four options in here. The first is annual payment of a lump sum at the conclusion of the mileage reporting period. So you go from one inspection to the next. After your second inspection, you get a bill. You have to pay that within forty five days of the other one.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. And that's for the previous year?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. And you pay it as a lump sum. So that could be, like, you know, a $155 bill or, you know, drive a lot. It could be $60. You drive a ton. It could be a couple $100.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So it's

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I feel like that's what I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: would So the way this is drafted, it would be at end of the year you'd pay, not upfront?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's that's the lump sum annual payment. End of the year within forty five days. There are three other options, though, all of which involve advanced payments.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: And did we well, guess we can ask Patrick or the agency later, but this was the one they didn't want?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Gonna Patrick's gonna get into we're gonna go through this, then we're gonna start and let Patrick go through. I know that the agency has a problem with holding everything to the end of the I think we're going to have to discuss this. Usually a

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: lot

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: of these things are upfront. You pay your registration for the year coming and I think the agency has said this puts them in some difficulty to be able to run the agency having it on the back end. So we'll have to discuss the whole thing. So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: there are four options here. It's worth noting that these four options, none of they are all independent. So you can view this as an a la carte menu. You can take all of them. You can take one, two, or three of them based on the agency's testimony and other stakeholders and your own policy preferences. So second is a pay as you go installment payments. So it's as it sounds. If the commissioner makes the pay as you go option available, So this language has been left in because currently they're figuring out if that's an option right away. Is pay as you go defined?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: What's the risk of pay as you go and

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Pay as you go is defined later as set forth in subdivision three. So but that essentially is you take periodic readings of your odometer and you make payments periodically, and then at the end of the year, you reconcile. So, any additional amounts that are out at the end of the year get paid.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You're if you're taking an odometer reader, there wouldn't be a true up. You would just need a final reading.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. So you get a final reading at the end of the year to reconcile.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: There wouldn't be a reconcile.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: It'd just be a final reading.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There is potential that there's an error earlier on that you don't catch. I don't know if it came out or something like that.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Well So did you get money back?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, we're gonna we're gonna get to

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: announce where I pay the hint.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I Yeah. I have the question about if this is a system, the honor system, where somebody reports their number depending on the way the agency does it.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The system is is left broad as the commissioner and times and in a manner that commissioner requires.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The commissioner might require like like Virginia does. You snap a picture of it and do that. But if you don't, they just report a number. If you want to report once a year, you get dated at the end of the year and catch up. There is a true up. So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: there

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: gonna have to do this, whatever we decide. So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're we're we're getting there. So then there's estimated payments, where you can make estimated payments of the mileage based user fee in annual, quarterly, or monthly installments as set forth in Subdivision 4, so we'll get there in a minute. And this would be a pay in advance. So you pay the $154 either upfront or you can split it out into four payments over the course of the year like you would do with your taxes, or you can split it up into 12 payments to make it even smaller. So this would be like that monthly donation that you make where it auto deducts from your bank account. Or or your Or,

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: like, you know

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Right. And if that's it allows the individual to elect one of those three options, a lump sum upfront, quarterly, or monthly payments. And then finally, there is a flat rate, which is at roughly 150% of the estimated average annual miles traveled. So the average annual is one fifty four. I I round it down to two twenty five. You could round up to two thirty or two fifty. But this is if someone says this is all too much trouble.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yes.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I just wanna pay a flat one time fee at the start of each year. I don't wanna worry about what's on my odometer or how much I drive.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yes. I honestly, I feel like that. Like, just as a consumer, that's my ideal situation. Is I don't want to get an app. I don't want to have to call somebody and have an account manager sort out my odometer. There's so many examples. Like as someone who works in a business where we do have a subscription based model, people's cards go down. Their card gets stolen. They change a number to somebody. All of this billing process you don't experience with the gas tax at all. It's so behind the scenes. It just frustrates me that it appears that whatever we do, electric vehicle drivers for the next few years will have an additional administrative task and annoyance unlike every other ice dryer. So that's I want to limit that as

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: much as possible. Will say what you are doing here is setting up a system that over the next five years you would add plug in hybrids or add hybrids, and this is going to be the base for everybody. Well it's a

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: bit of an experiment, if I'm being honest. I kind of like the idea of starting with all four options, and then the AOT folks figuring out, well where do people land? My feeling is I feel like the majority of people would go for a fixed amount or a lump sum, but that's just standard from Windsor's perspective. If they ran this program for five years and they found out every, like 80% of people were choosing the pay as you go monthly, then we would say, well, we would roll out to all vehicles the pay as you go model. That's the one that people are gravitating towards. So I feel like if we're gonna do this, I do like the idea of having as many options as possible. So then when we roll it out to everybody, we've seen kind of where do people organically sort themselves into payment methods that work best for them? And that's then the ones we But

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: this also is the base for everybody.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, exactly. Yeah. And we might get rid

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: of these. We also need good outreach. And we're not doing that at all. So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I would point you back to, Patrick's last presentation on the, the CERT grant that they they are required as part of that grant to do education and outreach. So that is already built into the process We're gonna

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: get to look that in here. There's pieces about that.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. So the subdivision two sets out the annual mileage based user prepayment option, which is basically at the end of your mileage reporting period, you get a bill within forty five days of the bill being sent. You have to pay the full amount as a lump sum. So that is a yep. It is a big bill at the end of the year. The pay as you oh, go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: What are the requirements for notice that you owe? Like, what's the requirements? So, like, I get a bill

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You get it.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Do I get a letter about the bill? Do I get

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: So the email?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Mail includes US Postal Service mail, email, or other electronic notice. So depends on how you set up your account.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. But how many notices would they be required to send to me? Because forty five days is a quick turnaround for potentially, like, $300 at worst case.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I I don't know.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: How many?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: This doesn't address how many notices. It just says that they have to mail you notice and within

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: forty five days of some, like, specific you need to be notified a certain amount of times or, like, you know, before because this is your vehicle. Because you could get your what is the consequence if you don't pay? What happens to your vehicle?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You start accruing interest Okay. On the amount due at one and a half percent per month up to a cap of 18%. Then when your next registration comes due, you have to pay the full amount before you can renew your registration.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: That's that's I don't like that. That's a little crazy to me. Well, let's go through it. Let's go through

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: it. Yeah. We're, we're, going through these, but we're not even sure where I've already got them maxed out on these two sides. We're not there yet on this section. So we're picking it apart when

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. And Patrick's gonna comment

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: on this. Yes, we're gonna

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: hear from Patrick and the agency. They don't like the backside payment. They'd rather have it up front. I think they're they're gonna have a lot of this

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: is meant to be in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a draft that people could react

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: So are you saying that you should not be commenting?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No. You should comment because he needs to incorporate, but Patrick's also gonna get Patrick's the next one in the chair.

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: The the only thing I'm saying is that think we're maybe getting a little too much into the weeds and we haven't picked. We may not even go here.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Oh, yep. Right. Yep. That's right. Oh, I see. See. Yep.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. Pay as you go option is Subdivision 3. So an owner or lessee who opts into that, we report mileage shown on the odometer of their electric vehicle at times and in a manner required by the commissioner. So because this program has not been set up yet, that language is deliberately vague and allows discretion for the commissioner to set up what works for the department as far as establishing the pay as you go, and then folks can decide if that works for them. And then as soon as practicable after receiving each report, the commissioner would calculate the amount due for that installment and mail to the owner or lessee a statement, and the owner or lessee would have thirty days to pay the full amount due. And then at the end of each mileage reporting period, the amount would be reconciled against the actual mileage driven, based on the inspection. Most likely, as senator Perchlik mentioned, that will be a payment of whatever the balance is between your last report and your inspection. The estimated payment option in Subdivision 4. So at this under this option, upon registration of the electric vehicle or registration renewal and estimated mileage based user fees equal so right now, it's a $154, so it's basically the rate multiplied by the average miles driven. So this could change over time if Vermonters start driving more or less. You make that payment, And then you either pay the estimated amount as a lump sum within not more than forty five days, or you enter into an agreement to make installment payments on a monthly or quarterly basis. So this could be the $154 on a monthly basis is it's under $15 a month. I I don't know the exact amount, but that gives you a sense.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Where do we get the number for vehicle miles traveled?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The department has a current estimate of about 11,000 miles.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: And so we'd be using the age

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: of You use that as your estimate. And then at the end of each year, the amount paid would be reconciled against the actual mileage driven. The one-

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: How do they come up with their number for average vehicle miles traveled?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's a better question for them.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Okay, I'm going

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: to save that.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The one thing to note here is that there may need to be a true up in the language here because the initial payment is assessed at registration, but then a true up is at the end of the mileage reporting period. Those may not line up, And so we may want to clean that language up going forward just to address those situations where that doesn't line up. Subdivision V sets out the process for reconciliation of mileage for pay as you go and estimated payment options. Essentially at the end of each year, the commissioner determines the amount of actual miles traveled. And if the actual amount is less than the amount paid, then you received in credit. The owner or lessee would receive a credit. So the difference, that would be applied to reduce the amount of future fees due. And then if the amount paid is less than the amount that's the total amount of miles or total fee for the amount of miles driven, then you would that would be added to the next amount due from the owner or lessee. So your next estimated payment would have an additional $20 on it or something like that if you did a lot of driving in the last month or last quarter. Finally, the flat rate option. An owner who elects the flat rate option would pay the fee the flat rate fee within forty five days after the commencement of each mileage phase or mileage reporting period. And then they would not not be required to report vehicle miles traveled to the commissioner, but they would not be exempt from requirements of other requirements of state law related to inspections or odometer disclosures. They just don't have to. For example, if they if their vehicle gets totaled, they don't have to make a separate mileage report to the commissioner. At that point, they pay their flat fee.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would just say to put 150% in, and Patrick, of the things I personally would love to hear from you, at what level would we set a flat rate where in that category, everybody that elected into it, we would not lose money. If we you know, in drafts, I see this, we set the rate at 98%. Well, you know, at some level we could you can lose money on people because they're big high But across everybody, at what rate would we set that to do that? I quite frankly, in all this, I don't want to pay monthly, I don't want to worry about I would probably at $125 or $225 I pay a flat rate.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: So I want a discount for Well, paying on the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think we're going to have to have that argument in the piece, but if I have somebody that's driving 25,000 miles a year and they build the average on 11, I don't want them is a user based system. How do I balance that with?

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Right, and some of the outreach I think needs to happen before we make these final decisions. Yep,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: and they have to have a blend and they have to do all of this.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Like a flat rate option, not have a true up?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's no need for a true up. You're just paying a flat rate. There's no mileage measurement.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: But you could have

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: a mileage. You could true it up to that.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's the estimated option. Estimated option, you pay a flat rate in advance, and then you true up at the end of the year. Flat rate is saying, either I know I'm gonna drive a lot of miles or I don't wanna be bothered.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I'm choosing to pay

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: a flat

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: rate with I don't see why we do a flat rate and not true. You have to get an inspection and you're already doing the amount of why you would say this is we think that you could probably throw $300 worth. So 10 to 75.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Think that's a whole more,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that's why. I think that's a whole discussion that need you all need to think about where you wanna land on this. No, I quite frankly would, I don't want to deal with it, I want to true up at the end of the year, I don't want to do any of this. For $225, I'm probably just going to send my check-in and say leave me alone. We're gonna

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: be happy to take your money.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Right. You know? I'm gonna

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: be happy to 26,000 miles a year. Well,

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: we increase it next time.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: We're gonna figure Not for me.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: But for him too. Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. Alright. So subsection b sets out that for newly registered vehicles, the owner would elect to either do the pay as you go or the estimated payment option. I forgot to add the flat rate option because that would be another option. So that's all three of those. This ensures that someone who purchases a new vehicle is paying into the system when they start using the roads, and so that that doesn't allow for the end of the year payment. Election of different payment options allows an owner or lessee of an vehicle to select a different payment option by providing notice to the commissioner in the time and manner prescribed by the commissioner. So the commissioner can set up a process. I need thirty days notice or sixty days notice, whatever it is, and let folks know. Subsection d just sets out the basic math that's done to calculate the mileage based user fee. You multiply the miles traveled by the applicable rate, and the number of miles traveled is equal to either the difference in miles between your inspection at the end of the reporting period and your inspection at the beginning, or if you're filing a report as part of the pay as you go, your most recent report and your most recent prior report before that. Does that make sense?

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Yeah, and no discussion of out of state perhaps.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Not yet. We get to that in a minute. Mileage based user fee rate is set at 1.4¢ per mile traveled. That is a policy choice for all of you, but that's the estimate from the Vermont UVM study. The exemptions apply to US government vehicles, state government vehicles, and vehicles used for short term rentals. The fee is in addition to other fees and taxes, so this does not exempt you from your purchase and use tax or your registration fee. Within forty five days, an individual can appeal the amount of the assessment, and the commissioner is required to establish procedures for filing hearing appeals pursuant to existing law around the ability to appoint hearing officers and set up a procedure for hearings. And that procedure shall include a process for the appellant to settle the dispute prior to a final administrative decision. That just allows folks to kind of come to a settlement with the department rather than going through the full process. And subsection I provides that if you have a terminating event and you're owed a refund, so let's say you've had estimated payments, and then you've moved out of state, but you only drove 3,000 miles before you moved out of state, you can get a refund for the remainder of your EMBA or what whatever other things happen, you sell the vehicle, that sort of thing.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: You pass away.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: You pass away. Your vehicle gets totaled. All kinds of things. Happen.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Bit of deer.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. Well, it's So doing Let's not let's not do a little worse.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Do we and I have no real opinion about it. Do we set ourselves up in this? If this is the one case with DMV that we give refunds, that we open ourselves up for everybody to say, you registered your card, you get a voice card. Oh, yeah. But should some but all the other fees we charge, do we set ourselves up that we should get we should now start to get refunds? That's a good question.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's a good point because I don't know about you, but I've run across, I've had constituents that say, you know, I sold my car midstream or registered it, I'm carless, and I paid for the whole year and about half a year back, then it comes up with

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: the law. That is hard to do. Yeah. I don't why we do it for one

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: or the other. Yeah. But that's just a question that we're gonna wanna think about.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Purchase and use if you get a refund on that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: What you what do I do I get a refund on dad just passed away and he got a license and he only lived a month. Do would he ask for eleven months back?

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: I would say no. If we I'm just saying. The state is. The state. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So no. We're asking the individual is asking for refund from the state.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. If we're giving the money back to them, then yeah, we should give it back to them.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: The question is should we give them the money back to them? If you get a driver's license and pay the fee but then die the next day, can you get a refund?

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: I think you should.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah, it may.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Well, maybe we could change that too. But we're sending it to in the future too, like maybe that was a

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Well, let's think I about

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: think you need to think about. I think you just need to think about it. Okay? So whatever we want to do, I wanted a conscious decision. Yes.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. 4304, this just requires inspection mechanics to report mileage shown on the odometer as part of the inspection, and then on occurrence of a terminating event, the owner or lessee to report the mileage shown on the odometer at the time of the terminating event, in the time and manner required by the commissioner. So this allows currently, if you sell the vehicle or at the termination of a lease, you have to provide an odometer disclosure. So that would be the report there. But for other events, you may need to provide either an estimated or actual mileage to the commissioner at that time. And so this allows for that to be set up. Well,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I just had a thought.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I mean, I don't wanna get too deep into the weeds, but

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: that is a little different than people asking for a refund and registration. We're still not gonna give those people that terminate. We're gonna give them a we're talking about giving them a rebate on their gas taxes, not the registration. So it is a we're not really setting a precedent there.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We need it, you know, just I you know, I could see somebody asking us that question.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. Didn't get it out before it flew down.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Are you leaving?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No. Just I'll be here. Oh. Gradually. I

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: was like, what bill is Pat reporting?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: To be honest. Alright. Section forty three zero five provides that if you fail to pay the full amount of the mileage use based user fee when due, you owe an additional interest calculated at one and a half percent a month on the amount that remains unpaid. The maximum amount of interest that may accrue is 18%, which equals one year's interest. At that point, well, you you're gonna be running up against having your registration not renewing or something like that. So there are other mechanisms. So the house made a policy decision there to cap.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: To cap the fee?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: To cap that interest. Yeah. And then an individual may request, that the commissioner waive some or all of the amount of the overdue fee or interest or both. And the commissioner may, upon receiving a request or on the commissioner's own motion, which means the commissioner can do this in their their own discretion. For example, if they discover an error or something like that, Waive some or all of the amount of the overdue fee and interest, if the commissioner determines that good cause existed for the delay or that requiring payment would constitute an economic hardship. Failure to file a report penalty rate. So if the commissioner is unable to determine the annual vehicle miles traveled because the owner or lessee failed to file a report, so not the inspection mechanic, or failed to have the vehicle inspection vehicle inspected, so this is you failed to get it inspected, not that your mechanic didn't file what they're supposed to file with the commissioner, Within a reasonable period of time after the report or inspection is due, the commissioner shall assess the owner lessee the flat rate. So that flat $225 rate that's set out. So this basically says if you're if you're not getting your car inspected, you're getting charged a flat rate. It is worth noting that the average annual rate plus the cost of an inspection may be more than a flat rate. So there there are some questions that get raised here, but that just wanted to that's sort of a default provision. The house had ninety eighth percentile, and that was in the agency's original proposal. In discussions with the chair yesterday, we switched this to flat rate, but, again, it's a policy decision. So ninety eighth percentile would be, like, $375, I think, was the estimate, and that's ninety eighth percentile mileage driven. So you could also set that amount at a higher flat rate if that feels appropriate. That's a policy decision for all of you.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Yeah.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: The final penalty in here is the suspension or refusal to renew registration. If after notice and an opportunity for a hearing, it's determined that the owner or lessee failed to file a report that's required, filed a report containing intentional misrepresentations or omissions, so in other words, tried to file a fraudulent report, or is delinquent at the time of renewal and the payment of any amount due. And then the commissioner has to provide fifteen days notice of intent to suspend or renew and provide the owner or lessee with the opportunity for a hearing, and permit them to be represented by an attorney at the hearing if they so choose. Forty three zero eight sets out general powers for the commissioner, authority to administer and enforce provisions of the chapter, adopt the rules as the commissioner determines necessary to administer and enforce the chapter, prescribe forms for the necessary, and then contract with an account manager to administer and manage the mileage based user fee. The commissioner already has authority set out in 23 BSA chapter two related to the hearings and conduct of hearings, so that doesn't need to be inherent. And then 4309 allows an individual to have an administrative appeal, so an appeal to a departmental hearing officer over any decision made under the chapter within forty five days. And then if they're not happy with the outcome of that hearing, they can appeal to superior court if they so choose. And then there's even a supreme court appeal that's provided for under rule 74 after that. And those are your exclusive remedies for disagreement under this chapter. So you have you face you have an administrative hearing, a superior court appeal. And if you really wanna pursue it, you could go all the way up to the state supreme court. There is a logistical question just because the court hearings would likely be more expensive than any fee deal. So but that's that's part of the administrative hearing there, at least gives folks their day to be heard on an appeal, at low cost. The next section would amend the existing infrastructure fee. It does two things. It strikes the EV reference because it's no longer an EV infrastructure fee since EVs would be paying a mileage based user fee, And this has come up in discussion in the committee before. It proposes striking out the transfer to ACCD for the program to increase access to level one and two EV charters and instead take the infrastructure fee and put them into the transportation fund for general purposes.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, this I would just flag. I'm a little confused about this move. Maybe I would like to understand from the agency perspective.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Sure. And it might be helpful also to look back at the original enabling legislation. I think there may have been some intent discussions there.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Like, is this what all the

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: I Like, what would be factual?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I don't wanna do is I wanna make sure that all of the charging stations that the commerce agency has committed to all the bills get paid. I don't wanna leave them with anything paid. Yeah.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And, yeah, this would be a permanent change. So infrastructure fees would now be going for general transportation purposes instead of being earmarked for that program. So the next section is the initial transition. And this, I think I discussed with you, potentially a week or two ago. This provides that, currently registered EVs as of December 31, would transition into mileage based user fee with their initial mileage reporting period beginning on their next annual inspection beginning on or on or after 01/01/2027. And then if that mileage reporting period overlaps with a registration year for which they've paid the infrastructure fee, they would receive an $89 credit against their initial mileage based user fee for that infrastructure fee. If that inspection occurs after their next registration, after 2027, so they don't have to pay an infrastructure fee at their next registration, they would not receive any credit. That was this was the final house proposal, and I would leave it to the agency and and to all of you to discuss whether this makes the most sense. So the next piece starts to get to a lot of the questions that were raised earlier. This is the mileage based user fee transition plan report. So this requires AOT and DMV in consultation with the agency of digital services to develop a plan to expand the mileage based user fee to all light duty motor vehicles to ensure that each vehicle contributes an amount that bears a direct relation to the estimated demands and impacts that the vehicle places upon public infrastructure as determined on the basis of vehicle miles traveled. The light duty motor vehicles are defined as any motor vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less. The GVWR of your vehicle is or gross vehicle weight rating, as we discussed in relation to the purchase and use tax and the motor vehicle bill, is shown generally on the inside of your driver's side door of your vehicle. So for many light duty vehicles, if you're talking four or 5,000 pounds, for trucks, start to get into the seven, eight, nine, ten thousand, and then above that, but then you're getting into medium duty vehicles.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Can I just go back to one place that we kind of went quickly over? When you got rid of the infrastructure fee in this language and you just changed from an EV infrastructure fee to just?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the EV infrastructure fee

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Well, guess I would say my one idea, is we've been talking about heavy duty vehicles and they're not having a way to be compensating the T Fund for the amount of damage they do. Why can't we repurpose that infrastructure fee and put it on the heaviest vehicles? Like if we're going to have a serious conversation about that, we've got a fee in place, it's called an infrastructure infrastructure fee. They're impacting the infrastructure. If we were going to keep that section, I would in part advocate for moving the infrastructure fee onto our heaviest vehicles in the way that we had. So

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And I think

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: you would put it

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: in that section.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: I I actually I wouldn't. And I'll tell you why.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: You're a lawyer.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So that that section applies to pleasure cars.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, so we don't.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So truck registrations are in a different section. If you wanted to look at infrastructure fees there, we could certainly do that.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: That's I do I do wanna have a conversation about that. Even if it's a small amount, even if it's a $15 infrastructure fee, the elephant in the room for this conversation is wear and tear on roads and who's actually impacting them. And I think if we're going to transition and not have an indexing on either of those, we're going to need an additional revenue source. And I think that that's the area that I would pursue.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Yeah. But

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It it would be without having any opinion on

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: on the substance of the proposal. Take on

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: It it's worth noting that the truck registration fees

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: are

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: are already tiered based on weight. And so you may even just you could even work within that construct, but it already as your vehicle gets heavier, you pay more to register your truck.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So as you get up to the heaviest trucks, they pay the largest registration fee. So then the question is, are you paying an additional beyond that, or is there another mechanism? For example, the diesel fuel tax. Although I know that's that's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I don't want to debate that here, but what I would say about that is the place where we have the most variance of electric plug in hybrids, hybrids, and the difference between combustion engines now is in the late duty vehicles and in that present category. I personally don't know of any electric tractor trailer trucks yet.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: There definitely are not in here.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: They're amazing people. Yeah, when I

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: went to see them, thank you.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But I have I don't think, you know, it's not any huge percentage of anything. So, I I guess The focus in this, and I have to back up what Damian is light duty vehicles. Yes.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yes. So just to return to an earlier point before I get get drawn away. Chris Roop is watching and pointed out that there are certain situations in which we permit refunds of registration fees and also purchasing new staffs in certain situations. So but they are limited, and I'm happy to go over those with you at a later date. Yep. That's fine. So just that's there. So, this would require, getting back to this transition plan, it would require a plan that would have plug in hybrid electric, hybrid electric, and highly fuel efficient light duty motor vehicles begin participating in the MBUF on or before 01/01/2029. That's basically saying by 01/01/2029. And then all light duty motor vehicles would begin participating on or before 01/01/2031. The plan would have to provide methods for ensuring that contributions are proportionate to the amount of miles traveled in Vermont by each vehicle, including additional payment and mileage tracking options for vehicle owners or lessees to select from, including methods for differentiating between miles traveled in Vermont and miles traveled outside Vermont.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Can I can I just ask about the dates? Because I know they're gonna be referenced in a few ways. Why why those dates?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: So the those dates were 2031. The chair asked me to have set five years out as the initial

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Everyone in a sort of placeholder date. And I I think you can treat those as placeholders.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And 01/01/2029 was the date suggested in the agency's materials that they sent over for the transition for the highly fuel efficient vehicles, including hybrids. And I I'll let Patrick talk to that more.

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

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: But these I I would think of them as placeholders.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Oh, okay. I I would say they're placeholders. I think under the plan that the governor proposed with purchase and use, I think we heard from Logan that six years from today, the purchase and use tax would be gone. This would implement this a year before we and quite frankly, everything we do in state government, we extend it. So this is meant to say, what we wanna be a judicious timetable but not We get time in the 20. But you kinda get the thinking what where on five years, this would be a year before you ran out of that that money and and but they need enough time to they can only do hybrids and plug in hybrids by 2029, that's two years after, and it's meant to be try to create an orderly path to get to everybody.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. No. I have no qualms with it. I was wondering more, to your point around the purchase and use going away. Like, we've discussed when is the point at which we hit that

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: kind of, like, crossing? In the 2029. Theory. Okay. Great.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Alright. The the other pieces that would have to provide tiered mileage based user fee rates for vehicles that use gasoline or diesel fuel based on the vehicle's fuel economy as estimated by the US EPA. So in other words, if you're this is not contemplating the gas or diesel tax going away. So similar to Virginia, this is contemplating that we estimate you're paying this much in gas and diesel, and so we're gonna charge you a mileage rate at this rate to ensure that you're paying the same as someone with an electric vehicle and someone with a less fuel efficient vehicle to try to bring everyone up to a level playing field. Based on miles driven. Based on miles driven and fuel efficiency. Because what what you would have potentially happen is you could end up as you bring on the plug in hybrids and so forth, the plug in hybrid, you know, SUV versus a plug in hybrid Prius get very different mileage. Even just if you take into account all electric range around town, you could have 20 miles for one and forty five or 50 for another. So this is attempting to try to bring that together. That said, the language, there are likely tweaks that I didn't catch in the

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: first run through. So And did I see something about trying to track in state models?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yep. So this is something that the chair asked me to include is tracking the differentiating between miles traveled in Vermont and miles traveled outside of Vermont as one of the mileage tracking options for owners and lessees to select from. So if you think back to the testimony from Oregon Yeah. They offer that as an option that you can opt into, where you are providing a little more location data to their agency that collects their road usage charge. But in turn, if you do a lot of miles in Idaho and Washington, you're not paying for those miles.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No. See, if I have if I have someone that is a snowbird that goes to Florida each year and their home is here, but they spend four months a year and they drive down. Mhmm. I think it's important for us to make sure we've if if it's a device, we give them an option to try to figure that out.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Totally agree. We gotta figure out who's gonna pay for the device. It's a device.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It can be very expensive. Well, think that that that we need

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: part of the conversation. Yep. Yep.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: And that that yeah. This is part of what's being studied here is how would this how would this look? And it's it's important to note that this is a plan to come back. Yeah. Is not implementing any

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: of this. We want the plan to come back to the legislature. The legislature says, yep. Let's go with this, and we go on.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Yeah. The only thing that this bill implements is a switch is the expansion of the mileage based user fee on those two dates. As as laid out, all the details beyond that expansion would need to be then addressed by the legislature, and it also gives you time to come back and extend the deadline if, for example, the agency comes back and says, this is what we won't do. But because of technological constraints or administrative constraints or whatever it is, we'd like to push the deadline out or we think we can and in some twist of fate that rarely happens in state government, we think we can move the deadline up because we didn't set it too ambitiously.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So we do and this is a question for Patrick Paterson, Michelle. The grant from the federal government to do this runs out in 2029?

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Patrick, is that I believe 2029 is what we need to report.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We need to report. When does the federal grant money run out, Patrick?

[Patrick Murphy, State Policy Director, Vermont Agency of Transportation]: So our grant agreement with FHWA runs until September 2028. Okay. It's a three year grant. Thanks. Okay.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: In developing the plan, the agency and department shall analyze the amounts paid by vehicles of different engine fuel types and classifications with respect to diesel fuel tax, gasoline tax, and infrastructure fee as applicable. Develop a proposed schedule for the inclusion of plug in hybrid, hybrid electric, and highly fuel efficient vehicles on or before 01/01/2029. Identify any other light duty vehicles that currently contribute less to the transportation fund than they would under the mileage based user fee for inclusion in the mileage based user fee program on or before 01/01/2029. Consider possible methods for to account for and differentiate between in state and out of state vehicle miles traveled by vehicles registered in Vermont and vehicles registered in another state. Examine the potential for integrating alternative mileage reporting methods into mileage based user fee program and related costs, evaluate the potential to include medium and heavy duty electric vehicles in the mileage based user fee program and potential rate designs based on vehicle weights. It's worth noting that the way we define electric vehicles includes plug in hybrids and hybrids. So you may wanna refine that term going forward. The initial draft is just a broad term there. And then if you wanted to limit it to just the battery electric, we would wanna say that because those are the pure electric vehicles that don't have a secondary internal combustion engine. And examine the relationships between expansion of the mileage based user fee program and fuel tax rates, transportation fund revenue sustainability, and Vermont's carbon reduction targets. And then it would require on or before January, so next January, a report submitted or a plan submitted to this committee and senate finance and your counterparts in the house with a recommendation a plan and recommendation for legislative action to incorporate the plug in hybrids, hybrids, and highly fuel fuel efficient light duty vehicles into the m b f. Provide at least two additional options for determining the amount of the mBUF, including an option of utilizing vehicle systems or an aftermarket device to track vehicle miles traveled, and the option to elect to pay a flat fee that actually should change. I'm sorry. That's in the draft already. Didn't catch that in the

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: last That's the civil section b.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: No. Just the the last clause from and onward. And to the semicolon. Okay. And then provide at least one option to enable vehicle owners and lessees to track and differentiate between miles traveled in Vermont and miles traveled outside Vermont with the MBUF only applied to miles traveled in Vermont. Okay. And then on or before 01/01/2028, the agency should submit and it should say a draft copy of the plan required pursuant to the agency's federal strategic innovation for revenue collection grant. That's the federal grant. And that language is a late addition and may need some tweaking. I didn't have a chance to run it by Patrick before I added it in.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: This is c or two?

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: That's two. Thank you. And then three, on or before 10/15/2028, the agency would submit to the house committees again.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: They're already required to submit to the cert, though.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: They're already required to submit a draft copy of the cert, and then the final plan and proposal for legislative action necessary to expand the number of all light duty motor vehicles honored before 01/01/2031, a report of all findings made pursuant to the various research questions that were asked in subsection b, and any additional recommendations for legislative action. As used in this section, light duty motor vehicle means any motor vehicle with a GVWR of not more than 10,000 pounds. I realized as we were going through that that I forgot to define highly fuel efficient vehicle. I believe we are using the definition of more than 25 miles per gallon, but that likely should be defined.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I think we'll wanna hear from Patrick on where he would like to go. Yeah. You know, Virginia is 25 miles per gallon, but, UBM has done a study.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: There's a couple more sections. I can explain them pretty quickly. The first is the expansion from elect just pure electric vehicles to highly fuel efficient vehicles, and I define it there as at least 25 miles per gallon and including plug in electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles. And then hybrid electric vehicles are pleasure cars that can be powered by an electric motor, but that also have an onboard combustion engine. So this includes both it in well, it includes any sort of mild hybrid. And then plug in electric vehicle is a plug in electric vehicle. Plugger car, which we already defined

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: At the beginning.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: To include includes plug in hybrids and battery electric vehicles. And then the this expansion so on page 20, the language that starts with expansion of mileage based user fee, a highly fuel efficient vehicle statutory revision transition. I need to make sure by touching base with my colleagues that this language will work. This essentially is a statutory it's a application section that says the mileage based user fee will apply to all highly fuel efficient vehicles as that term is defined. And then when preparing the VSA for publication, it directs my office to add an update that's effective 01/01/2029 that replaces the word BEV with the words highly fuel efficient vehicle throughout the entire chapter rather than doing the whole thing here. The question I have is, do I actually need to do the whole thing here? In the interest of time last night, I did this. If after touching base with my colleagues, we determined that it needs to be the whole chapter. I'll revise and do the whole chapter if committee wants this language to move forward. The next two sections on pages twenty one and twenty two, swap highly fuel efficient vehicle for light duty vehicle, or light duty, should be motor vehicle. I apologize for that, throughout and and then adds in a change to the mileage based user fee rate that would provide beginning on 01/01/2032 and on each succeeding January 1. So this is after all light duty motor vehicles are subject to the m buff. It adds in the agency's proposed inflation index. Again, this is a policy choice for all of you, whether you want it to have an inflator. The other language I've added in, which you'll see bracketed on line sixteen and seventeen, is a cap on the inflator. The cap is blank right now, but you can add in a cap, for example, 5% or 10%, whichever is less. So in a year where the National Highway Construction Cost Index goes way, way up, you would hit the cap instead. And we put this in in various things like inflators for pension funds, inflators for minimum wage, etcetera. So it's it's not unheard of. We also, I forget what the mechanism was that we used for the the town highway aid, but it's a different mechanism. You can also use a different inflator. This is tied specifically to safe highway construction costs, so it was proposed by the agency. And then the final language going on to page one three is, again, that statutory revision language, which I need to check on. And that is the walk through. Appreciate your time, and I yield to Patrick unless you have any questions on the draft.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I need to get a question.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: So so just an overall quest or concern is I don't see the public outreach and I think it's really, really, really crucial that we

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We did discuss that I don't see anything.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: Yeah. That

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: was an inadvertent omission on my part. Okay. But I'm making a note to add it to the next

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: But it needs to be robust. It needs to be we we need to hear from the public. We we we don't just need to let folks know what's going to happen. We need to hear from them. Rolling this out in 2027, I have a concern about that. But what I'm thinking is what we can do is have it be voluntary in 2017 and have that be an opportunity to get real life responses back. So we think these are those four items or the four options are good options, but let's see what people think in reality once they're actually doing it and get that feedback as part of the VTrans report because people are going think about other things and there are other things that we can do,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'm sure.

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: It's really, really important to get this rolled out with trust.

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: Actually to that point, I think we should have something in the findings related to trying to make this as consumer conscious as possible. I don't know, since this is a creation of a new thing, we understand that it would be nice to have findings around education. And I do want to highlight that we've heard from every single state who has done one of these, that they had some kind of feedback loop

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

[Sen. Rebecca "Becca" White (Vice Chair)]: On how it was going. And I don't know if that's some I assume the agency, you guys are all interested in that, but we should have some kind of way outside of the reports to understand, like, is this working? Are people finding that this is the right payment option? It's the trick.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'm going to suggest, Patrick, we're gonna take a five minute break and and then you're on. And you've heard some of the concerns around the table, and I'm sure you have additions here.

[Damian Leonard, Office of Legislative Counsel]: Okay. We'll see you

[Committee Assistant/Technical Staff (unidentified)]: in