Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: You're live.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So we are Senate Transportation. It is oh, it's not Wednesday, is it? No. It's Thursday. It is Thursday, April 2. It's not even fools anymore. And we are here to talk about the, and we have Cameron Wood from Ledge Council and. Great. I believe this is

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: my first time in this committee, so thank you for having me.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Cameron Wood, office of legislative council here. You got lucky.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yay. I agree. I agree.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's my pleasure to be here. So I'm gonna walk through some language about ensuring that individuals who live in what's called a common interest community have the right to install an electric vehicle charging station, within that community. So before I get started and jump in, just a quick kind of backdrop, I will use the terms common interest community. Essentially, we're talking about HOAs, homeowners associations. Our statute refers to them as common interest communities, which could be a condominium or it could be a planning community. Happy to answer any kind of detailed questions as we kind of walk through this, but just for general purposes, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about common interest communities that are governed by a homeowners association. And so I will share my screen and kind of walk through some orphan language that we have drafted up. This initially was in a bill that was introduced last by, then it was subsequently in a bill that was introduced by senator Perchlik, and and this language was reviewed by the Southern Economic Development Committee. That's where the the bill that was introduced is by Indian Windham. They had discussions about incorporating it into their housing bill in this session. There were some other provisions that they were reviewing regarding common interest communities, further restrictions on on how common interest communities can can limit what an individual can do within their own units, and they ultimately took it out of that bill. But I've I've kind of extracted. The bill is introduced. We've made a few additional tweaks kind of trying to address some of the concerns that had been raised in that committee when they were initially discussing this provision, and so we've come to to what you have here. It's just drafted up as some orphan language. As you can see, I don't have a section number here depending on whether you wanna move forward. Just to be

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: clear, this is you own a condominium in your in a community, and you own your condominium. Yes, sir. And presently, if you own your condominium in in a common community, there are individuals that can't find a way to create lookouts. My understanding is that

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: is the the issue that's trying to be addressed with this language. So you you have the common interest community. It's governed by the association. And then the association can have their own rules that govern activities of the community. Could be things like requiring certain architectural looks of the place, prohibiting certain activities that can happen in areas that are owned in common or common use. And so my understanding is there are some communities out there that are potentially prohibiting individuals from being able to use an electric vehicle charge to be able to charge their car in their own exclusively designated parking area. And so that's what this language will, when I get there, will, it would prohibit the association from restricting someone from being able to do that.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: The example I had was a constituent that's had the association was saying that charging a car

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: with maintaining a vehicle and then

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: finalizing it's maintaining a vehicle. So they

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: don't want people, like, changing oil in their driveway or vest or something like that and putting in a new transmission. So they they said, no, that's maintaining the vehicle. And even though they had put in and spent their own money to put in a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: level one, it's like, oh, look on

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: the outside. They didn't they thought it was this I got the impression that the issue was the aesthetics of a charging cable out onto the car.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah, and I can

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: add to the issue. Or did you want to?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Go ahead.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So I was on economic development when we first started talking about that and I've lived in a lot of HOAs and part of the, another issue is the installation because many times the parking is in a lot basically and so you might have your own parking space but you might not And so there's just the installation where you have to put stuff under the pavement, that can be a big deal. And then what happens when the person leaves? Do they keep the charger there or not?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I tried to simplify when I asked the council to draw us up with the committee to simplify it to just when you got your own limited congress because it gets complicated if your parking space is far away but so I tried to raid it in a little bit.

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's that's But this is I own my own condominium. I own my own park basically own collectively my parking spot, but it's my parking spot. Mhmm. And I, at this point, buy an electric car and then I can't charge it because And

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so, and just to jump into the language here, so the first section is about retroactivity. And so, you know, these entities exist and depending on when the community was created will depend on what applicable law would govern the community itself. So prior to 1999, there was the Condominium Ownership Act. And then in 1999, this body adopted the Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act, which applies to any community that was created after 1999. And then there was some further amendments to that uniform law that said that amendments to the uniform law that would affect communities that were created after 01/01/2011. So there's a little trickiness in how to apply certain provisions and ensure that they apply globally to all of these communities. So that's what this first section is intended for is that the amendment here, the section, the new section three-one 125 will apply to all common interest communities that contain 12 or more units used for residential purposes created in the state on or before 01/01/2011. And that's because, as I mentioned, there's a separate provision that says the amendments to the title and the title apply to anything created after 2011. So what we're doing here is we're trying to address those entities that exist pre 2011. And then if you ask me why 12, it's for consistency with what the statutory language already says. The statutory language says that amendments apply to communities that have 12 or more units, and so I'm just trying to keep consistency there. I don't know why the legislature chose that threshold back in 2010. And so I'm just making sure you're all aware for transparency. For my purposes, I'm drafting it to just keep consistency of what's already in existence. So then you get to the the real meat here, which is in the section what you know, this this next section. Again, it's just section x depending on whether or not you wanna move forward and put it in the t bill, and then I pass it off to Damian,

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: and he figures out where it goes.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Oh, dang.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The Cameron doc on the number Yeah. If if if there's only six units, doesn't apply. So they they could do whatever they wanted if it was under 20. It would just, the provisions in this next section would not apply to them, so they, in theory, it would be governing whatever the HOA's current structure is. They may prohibit it, they may not, they may And would that

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: be the same of other statutory rules we have about HOAH norms?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right, so the language as it currently exists, it applies to all condominiums that were created after 1999 that have 12 or more units, and then it has a different provision about planned communities, and those are two separate things. And then it says that amendments to the title apply to all common interest communities that have 12 or more units that were created after 2011. So if you don't have this section in there, the sub three, the amendment that you enact would only apply to a common interest community if it was created after 2011 and if it had 12 or more units. And so if you want, you can go smaller than that. I mean, you can say it applies to any common interest community created pre 2,011. You can't do that. As I was saying, I just I drafted it this way for consistency.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And why is it 2011 again?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's that's when the the last time that you all substantively amended to apply things retroactively. And and so you you created the uniform law in 1999, and then the body came in in 2010 and made further amendments to it and applied certain provisions retroactively to entities that exist prior to those amendments. And in 2011, that's when you all added a sentence that says amendments to the title. Regardless of when they would occur, any amendments in the future apply to entities created after 2011 when that last change went into effect. So Yeah. It's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: just so I understand it. So if I have an entity that was created the end there were entities before 2000 before '99 and before 2011. This does not affect them?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This would apply to them

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: based Yes, on that's this what I wasn't understanding is the way it came across. I'm okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Thank you. Background question, do we have do we know what neighborhoods this

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: would impact or would how many of

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: these exist?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And where they are and what I mean I think they should be on a map somewhere like an AR map but

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I can talk to other people.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Don't know if that information exists anywhere in a collective space.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay, I mean it would be helpful because then they would know that they would be subject to this. Okay

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: so page two, three and four really the as I said the kind of meat of what the intents or the language that is being addressed here for electric vehicle supply equipment. So in subsection A, we have a few definitions. Definition of electrical vehicle supply equipment means a device or system designated and used specifically to transfer electrical energy to a plug in electric vehicle. You have the owner, means the unit owner who applies to install this and each successive unit owner after that. You have the plug in electric vehicle has the same meaning as 23 BSA four eighty five, And then reasonable restrictions are restrictions that do not significantly increase the cost of the supply equipment or significantly decrease its efficiency. And I'll come back to that here in just a second. B one and two are the language that's going to apply to the community. So it says any covenant restriction or condition contained in a D contract security instrument, other instrument affecting the transfer of title, or any governing document associated with interest community such as the declaration, which is the document that exists to create the community, any bylaw of the association or any rule of the the association that effectively prohibits or unreasonably restricts those are the key pieces there, any governing document that prohibits or unreasonably restricts the installation or use of an electric vehicle supply equipment. Next key piece here, next key phrase, within the boundaries of a unit, owner's unit or limited common element or the unit owner's exclusively designated parking space or is in conflict with this section is void and unenforceable. So that sub b one is really the key provision here, and it's saying in a common interest community, the deed restrictions you put on the ownership of units within that community and any governing documents that you have, you cannot effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the unit owner from installing and using electric vehicle supply equipment within the boundaries of that unit owner's unit, their limited common element, which could be their garage or their parking space, you know, pertinent to their unit, or in the unit owners exclusively designate the parking space. Anything that does that would be void and unenforceable.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So just to be clear, this language doesn't say I'm a condo association, I have to build EV chargers for everybody who lives there. Absolutely not. It means I could just not say no, you can't do one here. You can't have an outlet here. Correct.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You can't effectively prohibit or unreasonably restrict the unit owner from installing or using it. There's some language in here about what the community can do and there's some language responsibilities that the unit owner that the unit owner has to have had to pay for. And so let me just run through, but, yes, does not mean that does not mean that

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the community

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: has to go and install, their own electric vehicle supply. You know?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But I think at some point, we should require that. This is a basic necessity of eventual transportation is

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: kind of where we're going. We've been working on this for a while and I think it's time. Just a question about, or limited common element. Yes. Can you talk about that?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. So that's really one of the challenges of trying to figure out how to graph this and apply it in a way that's going to effectuate what the intent is. The way a common interest community works is you, as the individual owner, you own the unit that you live in. But even within that, you don't own everything in the unit. What does that mean? So let's assume that this room is the unit that you own. You own pretty much everything that's on this side of the wall. You don't own anything on the other side of the wall. And then you typically don't own anything outside of the unit itself. So even if you have a yard with a fence, the backyard that's yours, you don't own all of it. Typically, it's a what's called a limited common element, which means it's owned and common by everyone else, but if it's limited, it means that you have exclusive rights to it. So again, thinking about this as being our unit, you own everything in this wall, that's yours. It's not owned by anyone else. The things on the other side of the wall, the framing, you know, that that creates the structure, that all is a common element. It's typically owned by everyone else in the community, and the community has to maintain that. It's not your sole responsibility to maintain it. And then, you know, you walk out the door and let's say you have a porch right here on the front, that would be a common element. So it's owned by everyone else. The association has to maintain it, but it's limited in that it's reserved for your exclusiveness. So that's really what the limited common element is intended to to cover in this piece is. It's a piece of property that is owned by everyone, but it's reserved for the unit owner's exclusive use. And, typically, that's how the garages are set up is it's a limited common element, so it's still owned by everyone. And that's why you'll see here later we get to a few sections that you may ask, well, why are these in here? It's because even if you're installing something like an electric vehicle charger, you may be installing it in a limited common element. And so the other unit owners within the community have certain rights that they can exercise over that, that you have to account for with these communities. So it's not a simple thing as, you know, you have a a driveway and a garage, and you may own the unit, and you may have exclusive use of that driveway or that garage, but you don't technically own it. You just have you own the limited common element aspect of it, which gives you exclusive rights to it. But the community itself technically owns it. So, and so just jumping back here. So you have the b one, like I said, that's the prohibition on the association. The B2 here on page three is saying that the association can enact reasonable restrictions. However, the reasonable restrictions cannot, keeping in mind the B1, they can't basically prohibit you from using the electric vehicle charger. So then you get to C and it says the association may, it's not a shall, so this would be up to association. The association may require the unit owner to comply with federal, state, local health and safety laws, including applicable building code safety standards, comply with reasonable architectural standards adopted by the association that govern the dimensions, placement, external appearance of the charger provided that such standards cannot prohibit the installation or substantially increase the cost thereof. This is important because it's really gonna depend on where the charger is being installed. So, again, this goes back to what I was talking about, limited common elements versus common elements. Are you installing it in your home, or are you installing it in your garage, which is a limited common element? You probably have a lot more flexibility about what it looks like or where you can install it, etcetera. But if you're installing it outside, external to your garage, on the outside wall, then you're installing it on a common element, which you don't own, even though it's your garage. Outside of it, you don't own that property in most instances. And so there could be architectural standards that the community wants to enforce to make sure that there's, you know, a uniform look of all the buildings. And so you're having this in here to say that if it is being installed, the association can enforce their architectural standards except that those standards can't basically say you can't install it. Right? The standards are you can't install it. Right? That would be unimproced. Moving to three and four, the association can require that the individual who is the unit owner, if they're going to have something installed, it has to be installed by a licensed electrician. And then four, if the EV, going back to the situation I was just describing, if the EV is being installed in a common element or a limited common element, the owner needs to reimburse the association for any actual cost of any increased insurance premium attributed to the charger within fourteen days after receiving the invoice. So again, things that are owned in common and even the things that are owned in a limited common element, the association has the legal responsibility to maintain those things and the association has the legal responsibility to maintain insurance on those things. And so if you're installing something that is going to be installed on or through a limited common element or a common element, technically that needs to be covered by the association's insurance and so if there is an increase in that insurance premium because of that this would require that it would allow the association to pass that cost on to the unit. Lastly, page four, two final subsections here, there's subsection D, which is saying that if the association is going to require an application process, then the application process has to be done in the same manner as an application for an architectural modification. The association shall not intentionally avoid or delay review of the application. The approval or denial must be in writing. And if it is not denied within sixty days, then it is presumed approved unless the delay is because of a reasonable request for additional information. So if you're asking that person, hey. You need to give us the plans of how this is gonna meet the architectural standards that we've identified or you need to give us information about who the contractor is, who's going to install this before we can approve it, and then the delay is more on the unit owner, then, you know, that can go beyond sixty days. But if it's not denied within sixty days, it is presumed to be approved. And then sub e here says that the unit owner is responsible for cost to damage to the charter itself, the equipment, common elements, limited common elements resulting from the installation, maintenance, repair, or removal. The unit owner is responsible for the cost of the installation, maintenance, repair, and replacements, for the cost of the electricity associated with it, and for the cost of disclosing to prospective buyers of the unit that the charger exists. And that is the language. It had, I believe, the bill was introduced at the end of effective date of 07/01/2026, and I had that in here initially as we were pulling this kind of language together. I removed it simply because the effective date obviously will go in the in the bill that that you all have and however you want to make that effective. I don't know if there's any reason you can't make it effective upon passage other than to maybe give people a little bit of time to to understand for these communities that the section's being added. But from a legal perspective, I don't know that there's really any significance as to when you make it effective. The only comment that I haven't made now is that I didn't when you explained the 12 units, I didn't understand that. So I don't see why we would do

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: it for ones that are doing units. So that would be the change.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I have a couple right around the corner there, six and eight, and I'm thinking,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: well, you know, why would you treat Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: No. What would it take

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to do that? Just change that. Change this language. Okay. I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: would just say about just taking off the block without having any testimony or anything, I would push the time out to start this a little, particularly if if I need a meter put on to meter my electricity that's going to this that's an association meter. Say I've got an open parking garage area or out in the yard, I've got a desiccating spot and I have to plug into something that is owned by the association. I need to get a meter put on, and not every electrician comes the day they called.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Is July good enough? Well, I'm That's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: just like for the rules. Like, it might take them much longer to actually stop.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. I would just give people I wouldn't do it upon passing.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I think this is good and I just wanted to double check so on page three regarding the insurance, I presume that it would be a continuing cost and the owner would pay as long as they had the Yes ma'am. Is this intended to satisfy the concern of liability? Because we heard a lot about liability, potential items made from the HOA. So it looks as if this is intended to solve that issue.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes ma'am, that piece in particular, that the owner is responsible for all the costs associated with installing or removing it. So ultimately, it's removed. It requires the unit owner to ensure that any common elements or limited common elements are restored to how they were before the installation. So my understanding is there's really, I'd say probably two or three main concerns that I recall having been raised, I was not around in this position, last biennium when the committee took this up last. Costs, as we've mentioned, know, if even though it's going in the unit owner's unit or in the unit owner's garage, and so I think just, you know, as a general matter, most people think, well, that's their space. They own that or should own that. If you you are potentially installing it into spaces that are technically not the owners, the unit owners, space owned by the unit owner. And, again, going back to the garage example, you may have the exclusive right to the garage, but that doesn't mean you own the garage. And so or that doesn't mean you own, you know, certain aspects of where the piece is being installed in. So I think ensuring that the unit owner is responsible for any potential damage is one piece. Second concern that has been raised is concerns about using space that's owned and common for the exclusive use of one owner. If you're going to trench up the yard to run electrical to your parking space, Technically, all of the ground that you're trenching up to lay the electrical, that's all space that's owned by everyone else. And you're although you're requiring a person to pay for it, you are then taking that space for the exclusive use of someone else. It doesn't prohibit other people from doing the same thing, so I don't know that there's a legal issue here. It's more of just, I think, a practical conceptual concern about how these entities exist. And then thirdly, as was kind of mentioned a second ago, Mr. Chair, you were kind of commenting to it, there some of these communities aren't individually metered and so there could be concerns. If you're saying that you, unit owner, need to pay for the electricity, are there any upgrades that have to be made or additional installations that have to be done to ensure that the charger itself is being individually metered? My understanding is I don't think that's a significant barrier or a significant challenge.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Or it might be that's just too bad.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's for them to figure Well, you know, and it's just my time take time to figure out. Right.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so but you've addressed that concern in the language because you're requiring the unit owner to pay for it. You'd pay for that electricity usage. So, the other just I don't wanna say

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it was a concern.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It was just more of a comment that was raised in the Senate Economic Development Committee when they were discussing this. They had an attorney in who was very knowledgeable about common interest community and doesn't represent a lot of common interest communities. And she was bringing up that in a in an ideal world, you all as a body could try to address many more types of new technology that's coming on, whether it be electric vehicle charging, whether it be installation of heat pumps, you know, whether it be any, you know, newer technologies that now exist that didn't exist, you know, when when the the uniform act was passed. And again, a lot of these situations are you may be installing something in your units, but anytime you're going behind the wall, you're then impacting common elements and limited common elements. And so trying to craft something that would be a little more global and trying to address all of those types of situations. Again, that's more of a philosophical request as opposed to a legal issue with the language that existed in the committee.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Getting back to the liability, think this is good. Think it's good to have the person paying for the increased insurance premium. Was that seen as satisfactory by the HOAs?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have not shared this language with anyone external.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's where I think we'll get pushed back on it, but I think this is really good and I think it's a great first step because things like the solar panels, especially the plug in solar panels, those might need language like this also.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think we do it earlier in the year on the amount of natural resources to affect that. Okay. The plug in solar. But I don't know

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: if it's as specific to the HOAs. But I think this is good.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And I will say, in response to that as well, there are a handful of other states, at least so far that I've found that have similar types of language to those, very similar, and most of them, if not all, have some sort of provision of subsection four to cover that concern, whether it alleviates some of the concerns of, HOAs here in Vermont. Like I said, I I haven't shared the information or the language with anyone external, but, it's not it it wouldn't be consistent with what other states have done to require that unit owner to

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: cover that cost.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you look at it? So section five forty four with 27, which

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: is the energy devices based on original resources?

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, of of '27. I am familiar with the section. Yes, sir.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Because I think when I put in the bill request, I it would be like this language, but this is '29. I mean, 2009 is when it got installed. And it doesn't have any of that other language. Like, it's just you can't do this.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: When and there is as I've as I've explored this area, this session, I was speaking with Damian about we we had a quick conversation of whether it would make sense to have something more like May that's more just kind of globally drafted. Drafted. I think you could run into an argument. Somebody could make an argument that, because you have a specific title that addresses common interest communities, if you don't have it in title 27 a or some reference title 27A, then I think you could have an argument that it wouldn't be applicable to them. And so I think addressing it in title 27A is probably a better approach to ensure the outcome that you want.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah, wonder if anybody's ever had because, yeah,

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I didn't say bylaws, yes, since it's not in twenty minutes,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: not in minutes, it's like E restrictions, covenants, or similar in finding agreements running with the land. Right. So maybe that even though they make a reference to patio valiance and condominiums, maybe when it was written in 2009.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Just to beat this horse, it was not dead yet.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We're gonna need to get at least a couple people in to testify. The lawyer that you, if Megan could get that, is there somebody that specifically, is there an association or somebody that represents, some homeowners association? Yeah. They like.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I would start with her and ask. I know she

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: is We don't have a lot of time, so anybody that can help us with and who anybody potentially that might be opposed to this, we should listen.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, so just a suggestion is just to consider language that would allow the HOA to require that the person indemnify them. There's some sort of indemnive loss. I think that would cover more than

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: paying for the insurance.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'll double check. I think there may be some similar language to that in some of the other states. I don't remember that being like a uniform thing, but I'll go back

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: and And not that it's required at all, but just and if it's not necessary to be in a bill and they have that authority already, we don't need to go to that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Okay, thanks. And we should think about if we're gonna drop from a dozen down. There are some breakup notes in the law when a building becomes a public building. What, we need to investigate that. But some options might be.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have a few pieces there that I'll just, you know, kind of pull together in the meantime and I will share some contact

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Have with Megan and some

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a wonderful morning and in the meantime if any questions come up feel free to reach out.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Thanks. It looks good. Yeah. Did we decide I apologize. That was way did we decide for including us with the T bill? Or is that

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: decision No. For

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: our god. When's your god?

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would go one step. I don't I didn't hear anybody that was opposed to the idea that we need to we have a couple of issues that we need to to figure out. You know, like, should it be twelve or should it be some lower number? We wanna get somebody that there's an attorney that specifically deals with this area that we're gonna have her in. Okay. And then get asked if there was an association with anybody. If there's Condo Association Condo. We we should listen to them. Okay. And

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well, I'd love to see them.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Don't think there's anybody here that is opposed. Right.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: No, and I think it's good.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So next piece, you've got I think you've got stuff to talk about for twenty minutes until

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I have stuff to talk about around EBSC if we want to.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Well, I think we need to we're gonna do the go back to where we were yesterday.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In the TPO draft? Yes.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Our stuff or she's doing that. That but we're where did we end up with the end of our stuff?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Patrick and I are continuing to work on.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Don't have a revised drought, So we're he's working on sending me a proposal out to school planning to meet this afternoon.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Oh, nice.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Early this afternoon. I should have a new draft tomorrow with some changes. K.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'd like to get as much of that this by the end of tomorrow as we could. It worked out. I'd like to have a clear path with that.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If there's markups from the committee that folks have thought about. That you'd like me to take down. I can do that now. Or you can send it to me.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. Why don't you put it up there if we take some of that down. Because I believe as far as we can and as close as we can to get our ideas down. Yeah.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So for the record, I'm Damian Leonard from the office of legislative council. I'm gonna pull up the draft here. I did find something interesting last night, little interesting historical facts. So Vermont adopted its gas tax in 1923, which happened to be the year that the model t peaked in production.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Oh, wow.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: 2,000,000 units when Ford's made up half of all cars on American roads. So just a little Is that a coincidence? Historical tidbit. It was part of a movement across the country. So the gas taxes were first adopted in Oregon in 1919 and which in the next weeks. Ten or so years, the other 48 states and District Of Columbia all adopted theirs. So Vermont was just part of that movement.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: then it wasn't until the thirties that the federal gas tax was adopted,

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: but this was So it's just over a hundred years of gas tax.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. I just over a hundred years. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: A hundred and thirteen years of gas figure is it half of all the model e's out there, a single gas tax for all the vehicles that were the same. It the idea of the usage tax was

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, yeah.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So in in

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You know It was easier. It was much easier because you don't have all look. We have all the brands and models in in all the different mileages, hybrids, plug ins. And half of your cars were one kind of car.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. It'd be so there there's I I went down a bit of a rabbit hole

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: last night

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: when I was working on this. But it looks like at the time, it depended on the state you were in, the concentration of model t's. Vermont was not among the highest. They were in more of the quarter to half of the cars on the road were model t's.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Do you mean Michigan didn't have a lot of Model Ts? Manhattan

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: actually had the lowest adoption or one of the lowest adoptions of Model Ts, surprisingly. But they were popular in rural areas. They had ground clearance. They were easy to modify. A farmer could maintain them. That sort of thing. So you didn't need they weren't like the other cars that were more bespoke. And so you need a skilled mechanic, and they were heavy and low and long and so forth. So that was one of their selling points.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: They were good in the mud.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: They were they were much better in the mud or on rutted roads, and the the engine was similar to the engines and farm machinery. So it made sense in a rural area. Folks knew knew what to do to get parts.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm gonna have racer repair to this Bill of Markey.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: He should have braces repair.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's the segue.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. That's a

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: good segue.

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

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: this night printer model t.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But, anyway, that's that yeah. There there's a fair bit of academic research that looks back at concentrations of those cars and the history of the gas tax Okay. And fuel economy changes and so forth. But that that aside

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So I had a couple additions to the finding in a dataset, I'm happy to add.

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

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So in the first finding in one, I had flagged that I was confused by the roughly equivalent of each vehicle's usage because I feel like the term usage, there's- we talk about the wear and tear piece. If there's any other way to put that, maybe like impact on the infrastructure, I don't know, like if there's another way to put that, but if that's not a make or break for me, but since it's in findings. Then the other change I'd like to see was on line 18, adding the federal gas tax in addition to the gas tax.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: So your

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: history knowledge will be well served there because it says on that Vermont taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel were last increased in 2014. And then if we could say in the federal gas tax, say, was last increased. I think that's right. Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And I could can I just say Hey? In your number one, because we're basically talking about, and I mentioned this yesterday, the term we use light duty vehicle, we use motor vehicles, and we use different terms throughout this. Can we pick a term? And what we're basically talking about is all vehicles below So 10 I think because we're talking about one class, we've limited the issue of image already to some degree. Yeah, what's our definition? Yeah,

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess we don't have it the phone.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So We could add can Yeah. Here's can I I like that you're light duty vehicle, but I think we should use the same term all the way through?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure. Light duty vehicle would be, I don't see a problem with using that type of motor vehicle.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: That's a vehicle under 10,000 pounds. Yes. So we aren't into the big trucks that would cause damage in in a whole lot of different ways.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Do you have a definition? I know. Does chapter so you created a new chapter here.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So do we we have a definition in title 23 of light duty vehicle. Maybe it's like you could just put it

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: in the definition section and reference that because

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the tricky thing with chapter 43 is that when we're when it takes effect in January, it's gonna apply to battery electric vehicle plus your car. And then under this current draft in 2029, it would expand to hybrid, plug in hybrid, and highly fuel efficient pleasure cars in addition to the battery electric. And then in 2031, it would apply to light movie vehicles Oh, okay. Oh. So that is that's the tricky thing with this. As far as chapter 43 goes, I would encourage you to look at chapter 43 and the findings as two separate things.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So think of the the first two steps with the current proposal for the m b u p and in this bill are subsets of light duty vehicles. And then in 2031, this bill proposes to expand it to all light duty.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. So it's like you can't use it throughout because then it would be we'd be misdescribing the cars that we're talking about.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. Unless you unless you wanna expand it dramatically to start off, but I think that's I I don't think that's in the current

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: we're taking a big step here. Yep.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: It's on the findings? Yep. So in the first one, talk about highways, and we talked about highways everywhere, but I feel like we should say bridges somewhere. And does highways include all other roadways?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So under Vermont law, we call them highways, and that includes the bridges

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That includes the bridges.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. So forth. So it's the, you know, it's town highways, state highways, interstate highways. They're all, you know

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So that incorporates bridges?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Although if you we could call out later that the Transportation Fund supports, construction and maintenance of Vermont's highways, bridges, and other Yeah. Transportation

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I mean,

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: could substitute Vermont roads instead of highways. I just

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Or transportation or surface transportation system. I mean, that's a boring way to say it, but that's really what it is.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Surface transportation.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: But I mean that's not as elegant. It was just Well,

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But part of opinion buyer to beholder and it's your findings. Do they emphasize the cap?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: We're the roof. Okay. So then

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Would you service transportation

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: for this? Know that.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alright.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No, that's exactly what it is.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And then, in the second one where we say lines eleven and twelve have caused many vehicles to no longer contribute. It's really, we've kind of personified vehicles and rather something like or my suggestion is something like and revenues from the gas tax have decreased tremendously or something like that and I know you do say that somewhere else.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Or actually, you know what, your point here is that certain vehicles are not paying the tax or drivers of certain vehicles are not paying the tax.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. And I I And that started working on revising that finding last night Okay. Which led me down that rabbit hole to the year 1923. The but the the idea is that in 1923 when he adopted the fuel tax, most cars got around 14 miles a gallon. Oh, no. And so it's like

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: They were modest. Was with the fuel

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: tank too. Since then, you have this wide variety, which has led to some cars still contributing, but you're contributing very different amounts Yeah. Depending on the car you drive. That's not to say that, you know, anyone's gaming the system, but the way the system is set up, it's no longer

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: it's not fair. It's not fair. Think there's some people that consciously make a decision and say, this does but it isn't as easy as all of that. There just is all kinds of different options out there that there wasn't in 1920. So then I'll let you work on that

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: because you already are working

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: on that. Yeah. I ended up with a very long paragraph last night that I'm gonna break out and hopefully turn into something that's less academic and more of a finding.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. I look forward to

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: that. Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So on line 15 where it says the mileage based energy, the word charges just it makes me think of charging, electric charging, and I'm just saying like imposes or some word like that. And then I guess to the next And I just mentioned this previously, the driver of BEVs or actually what you can say is BEVs do not require any fuel instead of do not purchase any fuel because the cars don't purchase. Where are you? I'm sorry, line one on page two.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, it's number six, right?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yes.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. And I have a note throughout to stop referring to PEVs purchasing fuel.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Smart cars. Yeah. They you know, technically, the electricity is the fuel. It's They don't purchase, they're in a combustion engine. Right,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: and I'm just saying it's the person. Well, while we have people. Actually, at some point it will be that the cars are going to be purchasing. And then this may not be necessary, line six, it's number seven, stagnant fuel tax revenues that have not kept pace with inflation, but I would think I'd like to add or the needs of the system.

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Transportation system. I just think that's really good.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We things.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And then just to since the very next one is the oh, shoot. That eight, I I put a question right next to you because I was like, the Vermont's demographic constraints have limited the growth in fee revenues? Like, I don't know what demographic like, young

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: people I I listed that directly out of one of Logan's presentations. Not to call you out Logan, but

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Good timing. Daylight from birth.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So it's not like demographics, like, people drive more

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No. It's it's you retire and you drive less. Oh, it is that. Oh, yes. That is what you're saying. Yeah. What happened what's happening is we've got an older population with more retired people, and the retired people don't drive to work every And their statistically is they drive less miles, so we're getting less from them. When they have to go to the store or they have to go to the doctor's or anything, they need that highway in place, but they aren't contributing in the same way anymore. The way we use the system is way different than it used to be. And it's also that our the range of vehicles that we're driving on the highway is way broader using lane. The the system's changing around us. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess I just had not fully understood that older folks were statistically driving less. It felt like, especially for my generation, we're actively choosing alternative transportation at a greater rate. So I love to see the chart. So okay, okay,

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: my question

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: mark is bad. I answer that a little bit just because older people and younger people both like walkable communities. So in my town for example there's a lot more people who walk to work than there were or more people walk to work than did fifth or thirty years ago. So so even though the population is older, there's actually more walking too

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: For what it's worth.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There's other pieces to this too. Vermont's population is is, as we all know, not growing. Right. Oh, totally. Reachable rates. So you

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It's not

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You're you're not seeing an increase in, you know, a a population increase that's driving an increase in vehicle registration and etcetera.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So Okay. So it's it's less about the age distribution You're and more about just sheer numbers of people.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. You're also

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: who we kinda built the system for. So maybe we could just be a little more clear about that.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Also, you know, may also make sense to call out that there are lifestyle changes that have occurred in the last decade.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. One of the things that is not mentioned here in the findings that No? I'm getting a Toyota with a great value.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: What's the gas mileage? April Cool.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You know? I'm not all Toyota's use gas. Yes. What it doesn't talk about is we're in a time of transition, And we're transitioning vehicles, we're transitioning in the population that's out there, and this step that we're taking to move towards is a transitional step. You know, if, for example, we go out forty years and everything is electric, We'll be in a different place and at that point we may get rid of the gas tax. Yeah. Completely. What this is meant to be transitioned is someplace in here we should talk about transition from a high level.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You're still on the finding?

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah. They were not.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I'm sorry. Do

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you Do you have a comment, and then we'll move to the treasurer's side.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Question on on definitions Oh. To your heart side, Which is like the definition for battery electric vehicle. Mhmm. It's a specific well, I guess battery electric vehicle is not the right example. But there's several examples like the mile radius user fee is only four but I thought some of these definitions we use in other parts of the title, why

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: they just specific to this?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So after of the universe event. In in the rest of the title, we use we do define plug in electric vehicle, which includes plug in hybrid electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles, but it doesn't specify that they have to be

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: pleasure cars. And we are limiting this to be the pleasure cars, not trucks at this time. We could define these mileage based user fee without saying this or it's like it's like the fee charged that annual vehicle miles traveled by the the pursuant to, like, future, if we want have other vehicles, why would you have to have a new definition? Oh,

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: yeah. In in if you look later, I just update that to highly fuel efficient vehicle and then light duty vehicle, with each change. But that that could be just say annual vehicle miles traveled pursuant to section forty three zero three. I mean, that's easy too.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Just keep the same information no matter what.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. The references to BEVs have to change Sure. Anyway when we update the statute. As you expand it, we have to make terminology changes. So, that's just what I did. But if if the reference to buy a b b is concerning

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I just thought it may be simple. It's saying what the annual vehicle miles traveled is a specific definition. And maybe there's reasons for it, but I just thought it was interesting that we would have an annual vehicle miles travel definition for BEVs and then have an annual vehicle miles travel definition for other vehicles. Why not just have a definition for vehicle miles travel?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The annual vehicle miles travel in chapter 43 specifically refers to miles driven during a mileage reporting period, which is not necessarily Yeah. But and maybe that should lose the word annual. Okay.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: What? So We don't need to spell out. That it was just Okay. I won't be attending here anymore. We

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: had a whole elimination study too. Was, like, just light. I make one other suggestion in the finding?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yeah, and then got it. Okay. Move on to the treasurer's.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: There was a

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: section related to, you referenced climate, and I was hoping we could include, it said climate goals.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah, we're screening on speech three.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Hey, there we go. Yes. Yes. And I want to just check-in to see if you had mentioned being willing to work with Ellen to reference the correct section.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, have not had a chance to catch up with her yet.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. No. No. So but

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I I have that noted. Okay. Touch base with her about referencing the Global Warming Solutions Act, climate action plan,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: or or whatever makes most sense. Do wanna know how many hours sleep do you think you have left? I But it too heavy.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: It was too heavy.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: According to my watch, I got about six. So Well,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: thank you, John. You might have been able to get that. I think that's fine.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You know? I I've I've been there before. You wouldn't like the result. Yeah. We have probably. Yeah. Just

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You've been to a place where you did the old nigger, we wouldn't like it.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. You can ask former senator Mullen at some point about what it was like working with me, and I think it was the 2015 or 2016 when I was doing about three hours a night and because the stuff that they had going on, I was not effective. So Well, we can't. There's there.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So Yeah. Did you Yeah. That's perfect. Okay. Yeah. You're all set. Can you move out of

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the I will be happy Thank

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: you. I think at this point, if you could move up. Sure. Had We're gonna share screen, but these are sometimes up. Okay. I've had questions in here about particularly when is a good time to use

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, I suppose.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Bonding in transportation world, specifically construction. And we all talk about theoretically, but we're looking to find out when is a good time, when would one consider bonding at a most optimal time. Scott Baker, I'm with the Treasurer's Office, Director of Debt Management, and Peter Crumley, the Director of Legislative Affairs is also here. So just gonna do a quick review of transportation and infrastructure bonds, and then we have some scenarios of what it would look like if we do this. Oh, okay, great.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: So the first page. So the Treasurer's Office is responsible for issuing the state's debt, and there are generally two types of bonds that we do. The first one, general obligation bonds. And those are the things. Anything in the capital bill, we bond for, and that's what goes into it. Any state projects, office buildings. We also make grants to some municipalities, funding wastewater, those type of things. Those are general obligations, full faith and credit of the state, it backs those. By statute, we're required to issue twenty year maturities. And those bonds are rated by the three rating agencies: AA plus by S and P and Fitch, and AA1 by Moody's. That is one notch below AAA, which is the highest rating that you can get. The second type of bonds are transportation infrastructure bonds, or TIDs. That's what we're talking about today. So those are not backed by the full faith and credit of the state. They're special obligation bonds. And back when we did these, we'll talk about it in a minute, there was a special motor fuel assessment of 3¢ per gallon on diesel fuel and 2% of the price on each gallon of gas that we've been collecting since we've instituted this. The Satching for the Tibbs does allow for up to thirty year bonds on these. And again, they're generally rated about a notch below the the GO bonds, AA2 by Moody's, AA by S and P, and AA plus by Fitch, so that has the same rating.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And are they not considered revenue bonds because their revenue was just tax, so you can't count that as even

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: They are revenue bonds, yeah. Yes. They just set special obligation. That tax it, revenue is pledged to pay those, do that search on that. As we mentioned, these are included in net tax supported debt. Just to show you what is included by the rating agencies in net tax supported debt. So we have the general obligation bonds. Again, those are back anything in the capital bill. They have about $550,000,000 outstanding of those. The property transfer tax bonds that back in 2018, we issued we had VHFA issue. People would call them the housing bonds. Gave the money to VHCB, they did some housing. The first $2,500,000 of property transfer tax receipts each year goes to VHFA to pay the debt service on those, and that's why the rating agencies are including these in that tax supported debt. They also include any leases or software, SBITAs, basically software type, the Freedom S leases, essentially. So there's about $663,000,000 of total net tax supported debt for the state. We also have some moral law on some of the agencies that issued some of their debt. We don't have general plans behind it, but there's a moral obligation that basically if they default, it'd be pretty much stuck in and cover that. Those are all things that CDAC, the Capital Debt Affordability Advisory Committee, looks at when they're coming up with a recommendation of how much debt to issue. So just a history of TIBs. The state did issue three series of TIBs, totaling about $36,000,000 in twenty ten, twelve, and thirteen. And again, although they're allowed thirty year maturities, we issued them final with twenty year maturity. At the time, there was discussion about more people moving to electric vehicles and worried about the revenue stream. So we capped that at twenty years. This just shows you what they were used for, basically bridges, similar ways, much. These were twenty year bonds issued 2010 through 'thirteen, but back in 2022, when the state had some extra money

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: see

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: what to do, we ended up paying those off, redeeming them all in 2022. It was about twenty one point eight million remaining that we paid off. It was about 3,900,000.0 in savings that we recognized.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: From not having to pay interest in the future?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Correct, yeah, that was present value. It was a little bit more than that, but present value turned out to be 3.9, so made sense to do it with the extrinsic cancer.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So it's like eleven years

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: if you look at it. Well, on when you did it. Right, right. Okay. Yeah. So this next chart just shows what we've collected in the gas and diesel assessments, those are in millage. So you see the low point 2021, kind of during the pandemic when everything slowed down, we still had about $12,000,000 in receipts. It's it's kicked out. That just shows what we collected. So when we do this, in our covenants, we basically pledge to cover two times the maximum annual debt service on lease. So when if you're looking at basically, take the revenues, divide it the the max the max debt service on this was about just a little over $2.02 and a half million dollars. So take the revenues, divide it by 2 and a half million, and that's what your debt service coverage is. The next next chart shows what that coverage would be. Again, we paid it off in 2022, but just kind of illustrating what it would be on the meantime. So the low point was about 4.8 times. In the covenant, need at least two times coverage. Kind of our state guideline is to shoot for at least three. If you get below two, you're gonna have to find something and fill that hole and make sure that you're at least two times. So two times would be the very minimum that you could do. So we we worked with our financial advisor, CRAD, Public Resources Advisory Group, and we considered a quick analysis of issuing PIDs versus basically paying cash, doing a pay go. So we looked at, we took the fifteen year borrowing rate at that time, it was about 3.57%. It's since gone up a little bit. It's about 3.9 now. So again, this was a few weeks ago and it's risen since. We also compared that to the cost of the highway construction cost index for the last three years at about 5.98%. So compared the borrowing cost versus the inflation cost, the restructuring cost basically, Did some assumptions. The next page shows you kind of where it ended up. The three, if you did the pay go over a three year period, your total, your present value cost is about $51,200,000 If you did that over five years, this is $50,000,000 $50,000,000 $50,000,000 yeah, sorry.

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

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: scenario. And why'd you take 50,000,000

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Just

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: as a scenario. Okay. Yeah. I mean, can

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: You can do any

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: We can do any amount that you want. Well, we'll talk about how much we can do later.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay. Yeah.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Was just a $50,000,000 ish project, so we just took that scenario for comparison.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It's a little bit of an eye chart, but I think if I'm understanding it correctly, it's essentially you pay a smaller amount in the beginning and then you pay a larger amount in the end.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Well, so the cost over time versus pay. Right.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: What's not in here is where do you come up with the $50,000,000 Like if you don't have $50,000,000 you're have it.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right, yeah. So this first scenario shows coming up with the $50,000,000 over a three year period. The second scenario is coming up with $50,000,000 over a five year period. The last scenario is if you just did a $50,000,000 TIDs borrowing, and you're using the 3.57% borrowing cost to present value everything. It's basically just an illustration of how much it's really costing you. So the three year pay goes about 51,200,000.0. The Tibbs financing is slightly more expensive, about 52,300,000.0 over time, and the five year is slightly more,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: 52 Over twenty years, it's $1,100,000 of additional cost. Are

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: you telling the one point eight is that what you're saying?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: The 1.8 is the difference between the three year pay go and the tips financing.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, well that the 1.8 down there at the bottom.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Oh that's just for

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the present value cost but that's that's per year.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah he doesn't have the delta on

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: here but

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: that's Right.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: The tip financing versus the three year period growth would be, like, the cost.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, so okay. So you're looking at the 52?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: At that table at the top.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Oh, yeah. Oh, the little. Right.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right. Top one. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: That includes the inflation of the the value of the inflation of the transportation. Right.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: It it it this is all done at the 5.9 level.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Well, of the cost, but not of the borrowing cost.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right, yeah. Right, the borrowing cost, assuming a 3.57 interest rate, usually, again. And when this is done, depending on what your borrowing cost turns out to be and your inflation cost, it can change. But this was just an example at this time. It of shows you there's not a tremendous difference.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought it would have been more.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. But is that because you're doing the transportation project inflation cost the value of not incurring that higher cost than electric meters? Right.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that helps bring down the delta. Right.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Is that annual inflation for transportation projects? Is that consistent with what we've been hearing from others? From our

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: own folks? Yeah.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: In fact, the that's the three year cost, and if we let go back to to, you know, '21, you know

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. It's higher

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: than what I was thinking. Yeah. Yep. So the next one, we looked at if we did issue tips, how much did we do? Again, this was just a 50,000,000 scenario. Took the $20.25 receipts and looked at the coverage that we need and just calculated how much we could issue with two times or three times your debt service coverage.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: He's sticking to this.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Oh, tips capacitor. Yeah.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's right. Okay. Again,

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: two times coverage is your very minimum. If you fell below that, you would have to come up with another evidence source. So at two times coverage, it comes out to about $113,000,000 This assumes, when you do this, you're either going to have to use cash to come up with a debt service reserve, or this calculates bonding for it, and so that's included in the calculation. At two times coverage, it's $113,000,000 three times coverage, about 75,000,000 This was an issuance, we put an issuance date of June 2027, because we haven't issued for a while, since 2013, and we haven't had any outstanding bonds for a few years. You'd kind of have to ramp up. It would be quite a bit of work, we kind of put it out for a year. Again, this was just using next June. The next page shows, it's just your debt service schedule, kind of backing up those numbers, but showing two times and three times coverage. And this is just to show you, you know, what the interest cost your total interest cost would be for the the two times coverage, a 113,000,000. You know, it ends up succeeding a million dollars in interest over time. The three times coverage only issuing 75,000,000, about 46,000,000 in interest. We can run-in any scenarios that you want, if know, if want to look at those. When we're going through this and we have the question.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Can we just So step down a little on this one, so when we have total uses, is that what's available for projects? What is that?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Construction proceeds up above right here tells you how much you have available to come. Okay. Then you have to fund your debt service reserve fund. There's a cost of issuance. Underwriters discount, you have to pay the bankers that sell the bonds. That's your, so you basically have to bond 122,000,000, but as you know, there's probably a premium involved, so yeah, construction proceeds on the first line of uses, so that's what they actually have for projects.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You bought 122,000,000, but you really only get 113.

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

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah, although you're only issuing 113,700,000.0 of bonds. Right. And when we do that, generally there's a premium. Don't know if you want me to You get over go on the but that

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: stuff, could that be impacting?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: What's the premium because? So when we issue bonds, the buyers of the bonds generally want a certain coupon rate on their bonds. Like when we just did the last general obligation issue, Investors want a 5% interest on it, but we're not going to pay them five percent interest. So, let's say they buy a million dollar bond, we're going to pay them 5% interest, but they're going to have to give us more than a million dollars upfront for that. So our yield might be 2%. So whatever that difference is, if they may pay us $1,200,000 upfront, so we have $1,200,000 of proceeds, we're actually going to issue a little bit less than a million dollars. We're gonna issue 200,000 less than, so basically 800,000 worth of bonds is going to get us, you know. You don't

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: really know until you make the issuance, it's people.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right, yeah, we can make some estimates.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: It's a market, yeah. Yeah, until the

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: day we price, we're not exactly sure, but that's why. So right now, we, pretty much every time we do that with interest rates the way they've been, there's always a premium. So we generally issue fewer bonds than we need for project proceeds. And that's what that premium is. We can use it for project proceeds, we're just issuing fewer bonds and paying a higher interest rate. So it all, it's neutral to us in the long run,

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: how much we pay, but. You explain your coverage when you're the coverage is a bit different than what you're saying, like how much is that? Yeah. Revenue is versus the debt service?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: The maximum debt service, yeah. So when we do a calculation and we do our annual disclosure, we look at what the highest debt, fiscal year debt service is. I mean it'll fluctuate a very nice small amount. We try to do level debt service, so it'll be very close every year, but whatever the highest year is, like it was about 2,500,000.0 when we did the other ones. So you take your annual revenues for your diesel and gas assessments, divide that by your total, your max debt service, and that's what your coverage is. So if you had 5,000,000 of receipts and your max debt service is 2,500,000.0, you have some time to stop it, right?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And you don't want to. You never want, you always want to have extra capacity.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right, yeah, the higher coverage, the better. You did issue that two times, you're probably, worried about your rating, right? What the rating agencies give you to begin with because it's a very thin margin. So if you

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: had a one

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: for one, like zero coverage or just like a 1x coverage, then your bond rating would be great

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: at touching up. Yeah, we'd be in the Yeah, but they might not even do it. That's not where we are. Ideally, I think what he said is three. Three is kind of our guideline, we don't wanna be below, when we grow up and issue, again, two times is what we kinda tell, you know, promise in our bond documents and everything. We've been, well, you probably wouldn't want to issue right at two times, it shows what you theoretically could do. Just some of the considerations, again, with our financial advisor and thinking about this, even some of the things we think about. The first one, the current borrowing cost is about 3.9%, a little bit higher than what we ran in the scenario. The last few weeks, municipal rates have gone up like everything else as you watch your news. So

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: when you say municipal rates, that includes us?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Correct. The municipal market basically state and local municipal.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: So we're all part of that. So they don't have a separate market where they're putting their bonds home too. Like towns. Like it's the town of Hartford. It's the same. So it's all the same rate?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. I mean, But depends the on the is the same. No, there are a lot of factors that go into it. Yeah, basically your bond rating is going to make The a investors are going to look at credit states. Well, any municipality has taxing power states a lot.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess the reason I ask is because one of the considerations that we have is that we are having to tell towns that they have not enough money to cover the cost of some of their basic infrastructure needs. And I've heard many towns now dabbling in the conversation of bonding, many for the first time, because they don't have the ability to raise their property taxes and we're not addressing their needs of the state. So I'm wondering, is it a better deal typically for the state to get a bond than a municipality. Like an individual municipality, if they wanted to bond for one project, a million dollar project, they might get a worse rate is what I think I understand. But if the state bonded for, I don't know, 50,000,000 and then we gave each town a million dollars. Does that kind of does that make sense?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. Definitely. So the state is going to be higher rated, so you're going to have smaller interest rates. There's also size matters too. Investors don't want it. Mean, the million dollar bond is that's not the use. There are certain fixed costs of bonding too, so that's going to bring up your total borrowing costs. Most municipalities in Vermont go through the bond bank, and the bond bank will aggregate all the, you know, all the requests issue one bond and loan it out. There only two two municipalities in Vermont that have their own credit rating. Burlington and I think it's still Yeah, so they're the only ones that had their own credit rating. That's why most of them go through the bond bank. And again, side, you know, they'll aggregate it, so there's a larger size. And the bond bank, most the debt that they issue is backed by the moral obligation of the state,

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

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: generally about a not to load. So if we're AA plus, they may be double A, which you'll pay a little bit higher interest rate, but it's still a A better. The credit enhancement. Yeah. It's having more log behind that is a bit important. Gosh,

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

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Sure. So number two, when we originally came out with the TIDs issue, We were kind of hoping that the rating agencies would not pick this up as NetTAC supported that of the state. They are including it. We know at least Moody's is doing that. So that is something to consider. When comes out with their annual debt recommendation for the year, they look at net tax supported debt and how much we can choose. This would be included in net tax supported debt. So that's something to consider.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You mean like the more we do get, the less we could do on the general obligation?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Probably, and yeah, I mean that's a discussion with CDAC and know, all that, yeah. It's all included in any total debt issuance, so.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: If you remind me what Craig Acton

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Public Resource Advisory Group, yeah. But that's in a company that you They're our financial advisor, correct. Number three, the- Okay,

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: let's talk about CDAC for a second because, CDAC looks at many things, and different items have different, importance, right? I mean, some are more than others and, Vermont has been just generally, very conservative on debt so we paid that the past tips early, significantly early and also when we went out recently I don't know which one it was but we actually they gave us a higher or a better rate that would be consistent with a higher rating number because we are so good about paying our debt and we're also good in that some investors like to have us in their portfolio because we're an interesting place too. Kind of fill out a portfolio. I don't, I mean, it is important to say that, but it's not necessarily the case that we would have higher premiums or lower ratings if we did tips.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: True, right. Although, so without getting into too much about what SPED Act does, so they look at debt metrics, debt as a percent of personal income, and debt service as percent of revenue, debt per capita, look at the long term liabilities like our pension and OPEB liabilities, that type of thing, among other things. They may annually come out with a two year recommendation of how much debt the state could prudently issue. They present they write that present that report to the governor and the legislature each September. And one of the important things is the legislature has always abided by the CEDAC's recommendation, and that's something the rating agencies give a lot of credit to us for, that we have that independent group and the legislature follows that amount. You know, we haven't done bids for a few years, so it hasn't come up in CDAC, but

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, and so just to be clear, I'm not advocating that we not do what CDAC says. I'm not advocating for that at all. But I think it's also important that we know, that this group knows that, CDAC's, in their last couple of meetings, there's like three meetings I think in the fall, they recommended a lower amount in the capital fund not necessarily because of our situation financially but because we had a backlog of projects. So that had nothing to do with our ability to pay and we're staying at that level in the capital fund. I just wanted You're to just

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: right.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: So when CDAC did their recommendation, they looked at different scenarios of how much debt we could issue. They settled at $50,000,000 They also ran scenarios at $86,000,000 which was consistent with the governor's ten year capital plan and allocated that among over the ten years. Those still fit within the debt metrics for the benchmarking against the AAAs, but there was testimony that the way money is being spent and projects are getting done, we realistically could not even spend that much in the next two years. So there is, although we have $550,000,000 outstanding debt, we have about $192,000,000 of authorized but unissued debt, meaning we've had projects that have been authorized in the capital bill, but the money's not being spent, the projects aren't going forward. So if everything was being done right now, we would issue $192,000,000 more of debt and get that done. It's just because of power that we have not been looking for. Some of them go back several capital bills. And, yeah, so you're right. We could go higher, but again, we just couldn't spend it in that period. And that is one of the points to hit later on. The fourth bullet, oh, the third one, just about ratings, because we haven't done this for a while, these were the ratings at the time. We would have to go through that process again, meet with the rating agencies and see where they are. You know, these are Some states are adding additional credit sources behind that, like registration fees, licenses, that type of thing. Right now, we just have those stooped GAS assessments pledged, but some states are doing more. Number four, we're about side money.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: But then also the registration fees could be part of that because they're not allocated to some other debt. Or the infrastructure. Yeah,

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: I mean anything going with the transportation fund right now. And the other thing, those assessments, even though we paid off the bonds in 2022, we're still collecting that 3¢ on diesel and cheap and expensive debt, and that's going into the transportation fund. So if you did TIBs and siphoned those out, it's basically just taking it from a source that we already have, that we're already using.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm gonna keep asking questions. So we would it be beneficial to stop allocating the existing revenue for TIP and free that up?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: They are. They're going into transportation fund then.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, but I thought they're still they're going to a certain place and then going to transportation.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Well, they're when we're doing these, there's a transportation fund, debt service fund, and basically right at the beginning of the fiscal year, enough to cover the debt service for that into the we haven't been doing that since we don't have any debt service at this point, so it would go to that, but right now it's just being used in the transfer.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay, so we don't have to do anything to pledge those revenues if we did want to do new debt? We can pledge those They existing

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: go to the fund. The fund is in a different section of the statute than the way the money is raised.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Okay. Right,

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: we're taking those out right now because we have no debt to pay, so. But if we did have debt, we would have to transfer that out to covered bank services.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, so that's available. Those funds are available for future debt. I've just different things.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: We keep the money and allocate it in the T bill, Right. But it comes out of the the transportation infrastructure bond fund that is created in title 19. They pulled the bonds in title 32. So Yeah. It's a little

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm just trying to make I what I'm hearing and what I think is the case is that because the debt has been paid, essentially, that that revenue stream would be available for new debt. It can be pledged.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: It could, right, it could be. Right now, we're not taking that and just piling money out. I mean, it's all just part of the transportation fund at this point. So if we did do debt, we would have to take that out each year to pay debt service out of what is already being used. Actually, when we appropriate the money, we appropriate the projects directly out of the TIF office fund. So in T bill in the budget we do, it it does not really it doesn't directly come from the transportation fund. It appropriate directly out of the TIFF fund. So when we go through our books, it differentiates the two funds. So but that's on the spending side. That's Right. Yeah. This is the debt the debt payment side. Yep. So the fourth one, just again, about sides of bonding and there are fixed costs to doing that, that's why we kind of did a $15,000,000 illustration, building, So number five, just talking about prior to doing the TIDs, the state financed transportation projects that are using GEO bonds, out of the outstanding debt, still have a few more payments. Basically, fund pays the majority of the debt service on the GEO bond. There is a small portion of transportation money that comes out of the pay of those. I think we have three more fiscal years to pay. It's about $260,000 in principal each year. And those were from old bonds issued prior to 2010 that the Transportation Fund is still paying a small portion of. Number six we talked about CDAC, the reason they did recommend a smaller amount is just because it was difficult to get projects built, finding contractors and all that. And then just to summarize, if we do want to go forward with tips, know, there is some raising up, we'd need to meet with the rating agency to kind of update all the bond documents and all that. So we're happy to run whatever scenarios you want or do whatever work. It's just going take a little bit of time.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So are you saying that GO bonds would be a better way to go?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: GO bonds would have a higher rating. Right. And again, so before we did the TIS, the transportation fund was just paying a portion of the debt service and still out again for another few years. So that's certainly an option that he could do.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, guess I had been thinking that we want to keep the GO bonds for general, you know, for other needs of the state and that something just for transportation would make sense here.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Because yeah, guess that's an interesting point at number five. It's an earlier that the kids are trying to consider part of the total debt service anyway.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right, yeah, at the time we were hoping it wouldn't. Same as when we did the property transfer tax bonds, we were trying to keep that in Because the state they're taxed, state revenues going into paying that service. But is there

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: an issue that's already agencies or the buyers of the bonds carry that if there isn't that direct connection to the revenue and the bond payment? We're we're just saying we're, yeah, we promised to transfer it over to the the TID money over to the debt service every year?

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. I mean, the the the GO bonds are higher rated, whereas the TIDs bonds, there's there's no general obligation pledge behind it. It's it's totally based on the revenues of the gas tax. I mean, you wouldn't you would never want it to fall. Somehow you would fill that hole, technically it's wholly those gas tax revenues that are Right. If you did

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: you did the geo bond and just said we're just gonna transfer the money every year to to pay that. Mhmm. Does that weaken the argument that we have

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: the coverage board or is that No. Not at all. Because you're just looking at like the general obligation bond of the state.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: We count that too for any other for the right matter.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Right. Are we still at the amount that we did bond or vote? Therefore, is that a one time cap that is in statute?

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: We're not. Yeah. There's there's

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: not a cap in statute as to how much we can do. Is that a joke? Well, it's a c d It it in 2010, in total amount of no more than 10,000,000. And it said in the future authority to issue transportation infrastructure bonds in the statute, the treasurer's authorized to issue transportation infrastructure bonds up to a total amount of 11,700,000. So that was for the 2010 issue? Yeah, that was in And the '20 then after it, 11,700,000. So is that does that mean in total, does that mean one time? Was for the 2010 issue. That was the first one we did. If you look at what we have we actually issued more than that. So, you know, I started in 2011, so that's right before I did. I'll have to look into what went into deciding on that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: But one difference is that GEO is limited to twenty years, right? Correct. And TIP can do thirty years. Right. That's a difference that we should be making. Right, and

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: yeah, you could do thirty years. You know.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Could you do thirty years to get, but then pay them off early? Can do

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: that, Certainly, yeah. Yeah, generally a lot of the GEO bonds that we issue, there may be a lockout, like Oh. There may be a ten year lockout Yeah. Which gets you

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So you get that. A little

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: bit lower interest rate. We've got certain pay a little bit more for that. But the last issue we did, we didn't have that. We had, like, a make whole provision in there that gave us a little more flexibility and it worked fine. So you could certainly do something like that. And

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I can see why you'd want a gear to get all this gear.

[Scott Baker (Director of Debt Management, Vermont State Treasurer’s Office)]: Yeah. I think you would definitely have to gear the program back up and there's a lot of work involved. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Pam.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You're welcome. Or no. Chris is here in either ten minutes or oh, where's Chris?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Let me check.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: There's no symptoms starting if he's going to get in and on that. Or so one of the two of you is gonna give oh. Sorry?

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's one of the two. We care rich.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: But we do care about both of them. Yeah.

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: know. Don't don't don't I I

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Chell, do you need the Zoom link? I don't need it in front of you.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: The I might have it. Hold on.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And the sun. Thank you. It's.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Are you gonna walk through the bill?

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We're gonna go through the bill in the sections that we can say Good. Yeah, good. We're just gonna knock off, then we're gonna say, These are the rest of the one that we need to get. But I thought we need to hear from the agency on, you know.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Damien's on his wife,

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I just have one idea.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So we do have the two different versions of the NFV.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Two different versions?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well, this is the bill itself. So the one that was passed by the

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: This is the T bill that was passed by the House

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

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: That's who Yes.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Which I think what we would be imagining is putting way of doing would be striking all of their strike

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: out stuff. Right. We're gonna we're gonna go strike all. So what's in the RT bill is here that we can just say yes to, and we've heard from the agency. We've heard from them. Correct. Like, I think the definitions might be You need more.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: No. I'm just

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: trying to join the Zoom here.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Something did ding.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: We've got rules regarding municipal heavy equipment loan repeal. They might be a. So I'm not gonna join in Zoom.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I've the is online

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Yep. For people to follow along. And you're doing it's I've got we some of us have copies. Yeah.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You're using the ELLs. I just passed

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Pass passed out of the house version. I'm not covering at all. K. Okay. I'm gonna be starting with section two, which starts on page three at the bottom on line 17.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: It's my line six. What? I'm fine

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: with that. Okay. Section two of the house unofficial record as passed by the house. I have the official. Oh, you

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: have the official? Sorry. It's not such

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: have a copy of the official, Megan? No.

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

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: have the have the official.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I have the We did get

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a I I have ads passed first.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Alright. We'll just I have

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You go to page three. Just

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I'm go to

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. Everything stay in line. Yeah. Page 17.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Same bill.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Page three lines.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This deal. Okay.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: That

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: at the top in red? Bill has passed by the house?

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay. We are now on our

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: end. Mine is not

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the same thing. Yeah. Mine is not ready.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: The one that's posted today, got her name.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: As long as you go to page three and you see line five Yep. The appeal of municipal equipment and the vehicle loan fund rules. Yes. Yes. Okay. So Why is there something

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I think this is I downloaded the book you put it on last time, so I'll get the new one if Yeah. There were Yeah.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Mine would this one was new. I was talking about things.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: There you I got that download. Okay. So

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So,

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: it looks like we're live and you've been on. Was happening? Again, we're still live. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. As Damian mentioned, when he went through this with you, the secretary of state's office reached out to the legislative council who rules general councils, is Damian, I believe. And there was a consensus between those two parties that the language currently in statute is not sufficient to trigger a repeal by operation of law as intended in the statute. So this is a correction to last year's statute as I understand it. And there were a few different ways to go about fixing this and everybody concurred that the most streamlined way to do this would be to request this statutory change that you see here before you legislatively and that would fix the language from the 2024 big bill session, big bill in 2023 session related to this very minimal part related to the municipal equipment, heavy equipment loan fund. So this is not anything the agency requested, but we are fine with it. This isn't fixed, so it's administrative.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So we're not doing this anymore and it doesn't exist. Right. Exactly. Okay. Alright. I think we're okay with this.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm gonna give this a green highlight then.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Section two. Good. So section three started on line 12, page three. Recognize these are changes that recognize the fact that Vermont has standards related to highways and bridges and now guidance, the multimodal highway design guidance, which will be completed this year. And that those frameworks focus on safety with an added emphasis on requirements when there are exceptions to the standards. And so, it talks here about for projects in the National Highway System, I'm on line 16, the agency shall maintain its state standards and guidance. So we're maintaining the guidance and the standards for geometric design. And rather than saying design speeds may be lower than legal speeds, we're saying design speeds lower than legal speeds may be used without the requirement of a formal design exception. If those proposals, if appropriate, warning signs, signals and markings are used as provided pursuant to 23 BSA section ten twenty five. And so it's basically letting folks know that as long as they are using the standards and the guidance that those standards and guidance will direct them on how to proceed with markings and safety measures related to using speeds lower than the legal speed limit. So this

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: is by folks that this is municipalities if they

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: have It's everybody that is doing a project on the National Highway System.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Who besides municipalities of the state

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: would be? It's just the state.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Okay. I was like, wait a I thought

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: you said not on

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Not on the state highway.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Sorry. My apologies. This is not on Not on the state highway. So would this just be class one?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: This would be class ones, I believe, part of the National Highway System. But this is the National Highway System is the lower classes. So you have the, like, the interstate and you have limited access highways. And then when you get in, and those are the principal elements of the NHS and the major routes like Route 2, Route 7, Route 9. But then when you get down to, I I won't get the right terminology, a different category of state highways and municipal highways that are lower than the ones I just mentioned, that's when they supply. And AOT is okay with this? Yeah. We actually asked for this because of the and then it was modified by the House related to specifically wanting to call out the safety elements. So this would allow a municipality if they're following all of the rules to have a reduced speed limit. This is not about the speed limits. It's about the geometric design of the highway. In cases where the design speed is lower than the legal speed limit.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay, an example would be like a bump

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: out kind of thing.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: A bump out is a good example or a tight curve or if you're putting the, you know, the raised plates. Mhmm. The plates isn't the right Table. Table. Thank you. I knew I was close on top of Yeah.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Okay. Plates go on the

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Plates go on the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So if you're in a village and you've got a crosswalk and you wanna okay. Yeah.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: That makes sense.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And then yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And then you don't have

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: to go through. There's a

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: You don't have to get an exception as long as you're following the guidance that has been provided.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: That feels like a pedestrian safety win.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Yeah. I would agree. So a crosswalk. Yeah, I

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: have a green check for that one.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Forget the landfall. Perfect. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is that all section four?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Section three. So section four starts on page four, line four. And this is where the agency is doing two things. We're asking to increase the maximum limit requirement for performance bonds and payment bonds for construction. So these are what the contractors have to put forward if they're going to work on one of our projects. And currently in statute, it's a $100,000 and above where you have to have a bond to do a construction project. We wanna raise that limit to 250,000. And the reason we want to do that is 100,000 was the old simplified bid acquisition threshold and the new simplified bid acquisition limit in bulletin 3.5, which is the agency administration bulletin on contracting is now 250,000. So we want to have our maximum limit increased to match that. Also, recognize with construction costs continuing to increase, that threshold needs to increase as well. There's very few projects that a contractor would do for us that would cost under a 100,000. And the risk of those projects that are 250,000 and less is pretty minimal. We also want You go back. You said they issue bonds at $2.50? Yeah, under bulletin 3.5 now, the requirement is the contractor have a bond, the minimum is 250,000. So this would be something that AGC could maybe testify on relative to the thoughts on this. We worked with them in developing this. But standard practice now is 250,000? No, our requirement is a 100,000 because it's in statute, but for AOA contracts outside of, agency of transportation, unless another agency has a requirement like ours, which is lower, they can now just go

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: into I understand under statute you're held and you've been doing a 100,000. But the world around you has now moved. The standard within the out in the community is it's 250,000, and that's what where bulletin 3.5 kicks in is two fifty. Yeah. Okay. Correct.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: And we follow all other parts of Bulletin 3.5, but we have the statutory language that would need to be updated to make us consistent.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Were there any questions that you know of in house transportation about this?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: No, I don't recall any questions in house transportation and I can't remember if they brought AGC in as a witness. I know we work with them offline. The pavers I guess would be another entity that could comment on this.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: But they would like us because it gives you the ability to wait for

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Well then it goes on. So that's kind of the dollar amount is the first piece of the threshold. The second piece is that during an emergency, we're requesting that the secretary, and this is starting on page five, line six, at the secretary's discretion can waive the bonding requirements for immediate temporary stabilization work related to public safety or state infrastructure. All permanent work subsequent to like anything stabilized would still be subject to the $250,000 contract bonding limit if you were to change that.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess my only question would be, you know, the flooding in 2023 in Weston, I felt like we were getting price gouged left and right because you're in a tough situation. I'm wondering if you can kind of reflect a little bit on that and if you feel like this could open us up to just getting higher amounts that we have to pay because that's the threshold and potentially getting price

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: gouged by

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: companies who are trying to sustainably make up some money.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Yeah, I can't speak to price gouging. It's a supply and demand matter in terms of our ability to get the contractors we need in a time of emergency. This is where, as you saw in 2011 in Capital Storm Irene, we ended up not having adequate contractors even stabilize and so we brought in, the National Guard to assist with that. The bonding itself, is really a function of it takes a contractor a little bit of time to secure the bond that they'll need to do their contract work with and during an emergency, every hour is important. So I think that's why specifically related to the secretary being able to waive the bond limit or the bonding requirement, excuse me, in those first early days is critically important so that we can get the contractors on board as quickly as possible.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And does that requirement come with work standards or certain What are those requirements within? Does it yeah. Does it change limit who we could hire for the job?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay. No. Other than I know in the past that there have been, small contractors who might do like culvert work for towns and other types of earthmoving work that So the

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: slide that happened ten or fifteen years ago in Hardwick, slide into the road, and this would say that the secretary could say, Start moving stuff out of here today. We don't have to wait thirty days for a bond to happen.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Right. And the bond is not related to the work conditions and requirements. It is, I mean, than in the fact that the reason we ask contractors to bond is so that if they don't complete the work appropriately, come back and fix it and you know, all of that. Or they just take the money and they can't really take the money and run because they bill us so that we pay them. But it's just a guarantee that the state will get the work done that they have contracted to do. Seems pretty matter of fact.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I think we're gonna agree with it. Yes. Any objections? No. Good.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm sad that we have to keep doing stuff like this.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. No, we need to do this more actually. Well, in other parts of the state, but that's a different There's so many things we don't do bonding, I'll label you. Yeah.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: You have a lot of experience.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well, yeah. Well, we used to do bondage, performance and payment.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm sad that we have emergency events that cause us.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: It's not, you know, in regular times, you'd want to bondage.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. I'm agreeing with you on bondage.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay. So now we're on to page seven, section five. It's already at the top of that page. And just for a little bit of background, the National Bridge Inspection Standards, the NBIS, are standards established for safety of highway bridges throughout The US. And they apply to all structures defined on highway bridges, to all public roads on and off the federal highway system, both state and town roads. So we're talking every road in the state. The only places they don't apply are when you have a Forest Service Road or Federal Road. I was just reading that yesterday. And that's in here. And so in 2012, MAP 21, which was the reauthorization bill, at that time, Congress amended the federal statutes to require FHWA to undertake a rulemaking to update the National Bridge Inspection Standards. The updated version of 2022 along with the rules that went with that created a situation where the inspection intervals would be based on the risk. So right now as a regular course of business, we inspect all bridges in the state every two years unless we find that there are issues with a bridge which would cause us to go out and do an annual inspection. And, the updated rules also require us, to have procedures to address critical findings in a timely manner depending on the nature and severity of a deficiency and the required action which may include full or partial closure or immediate load restriction or posting. And so each DOT must establish a document and process that ensures that this occurs and FHWA, here it is, requires states to have the necessary authority. So we're asking for it in statute to ensure that NBIS compliance for delegated functions for all bridges within state boundaries except bridges owned by federal agencies or tribal governments. So federal agencies would be like a Forest Service Road or tribal governments. Under existing law 23 VSA section thirteen ninety six, special weight limits for bridges and highways, VTrans must currently request municipalities to close or restrict the use of a municipally maintained bridge, even in cases of imminent hazard. And this language we're asking for would clarify that the agency will notify a municipality that a bridge needs to be posted or closed. And if the municipality fails to do so, the agency may do so on behalf of the municipality in order to stay in compliance with the NBIS rules. So currently we don't have the regulatory authority to go in and close or post a municipal bridge. This would, you know, we currently notify a community and they typically would do that, but this-

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You can say you should quote that. Yeah. And

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: then they could or couldn't do it. This would, tell them that you're required to do this and if you

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: don't do it, we're going to

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: do it for you in order to sustain compliance. And this is for basically 20 foot structures or larger. Those are the ones we inspect.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And is posting defined in people, I mean, we know what it is, can you talk about it here, but do people understand what that mean? Or is it clear in statute?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: It's clear in statute. The posting of bridges is a pretty lengthy section of statute around how that works. And so that's, I think, a pretty common function for municipalities. They do their annual seasonal posting for month feeds in and other things of that nature. So that's what we're looking for with this change in section five.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And this is required by the It's required by the Fed,

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: this brings us into compliance with FHWA requirements. Go ahead.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But is the fee required?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: The fee is a separate thing. The penalty. The penalty is a separate thing related to other parts of statute. So not acceptable. That has nothing to do

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: with Personally, I would not want to have that penalty there. I mean, what I hear from my communities is that if there's a bridge that's unexpected or not getting the work it needs, it's not because they're lazy and forgetful, it's because they can't afford to do it. So I'm confused at like why we would penalize a town.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Was it

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the town that this person's a penalty for someone who uses the bridge in violation of the posting or closure. It's not

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: a penalty for non inspection.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: No, inspect the model and we let them know what the inspection came out as and then we notify them as to whether it needs to be load rate, load posted or closed. And currently they would then undertake

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: that. Yeah, line 17.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: But in a situation where they really didn't want to undertake that, maybe they're getting pressure from an adjacent landowner or it's a thoroughfare or something else has happened, then we would be responsible for going in and undertaking the post unit closure if the town won't do it on

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: their own. Line drawn in being says, a person that violates a breach post.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Which means, like, they draw across the bridge.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Yeah. That's that's the that's the functional Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess I feel like

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: it's just

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: confusing what it's kind of like in this section where it's like requirements of municipality and then the enforcement. It it just I guess I misunderstood. So it's not enforcement or penalties. A person that violates a bridge posting, that wouldn't be someone inaccurately or not posting. That would be someone who is going against a posting.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: That's correct.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay, I am perfectly fine with that penalty and people should stop doing that. They should.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: You're driving around the site and it says this bridge is closed.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, that does not

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: do It's

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: kind of It was the same penalty they wanted for selling tobacco through a minor. True. True. Yeah. I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: would say if you're a 16 or 17 year old and you're a store clerk and you're under the gun and you mistakenly did it, that's That's different. This is not anybody making a mistake. This is somebody that there's a sign up, it says do not go on this bridge because it's substandard, and they do.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm okay. I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. I will say, as someone who is dealing with a community where the folks are have a closed bridge and they're very upset about it. I mean, 1,000 is a lot of money for any person to pay for a fee as we heard. I'm wondering where did $1,000 come from as a number?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I may have to go over a friend here with Damien to ask if that thousand dollars is already a function in statute in terms of other parts of statute.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That thousand dollars was fine.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: It was in our proposed language.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: If we are comfortable just generally reducing that amount, I would be open to it as well, just based on maybe clarity around our positioning.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But I'm not going

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: to die any help.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How does the community feel about that?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It does go back to

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the law. Well, I have a bridge, that bridge, that is actually posted for different weights, for different, not for, but it's emergency vehicles. It's like, it's higher, much higher amount than the others. So I would think the emergency vehicles probably wouldn't get a

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: fee or

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: can be accounted for. Yeah, and

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: actually, well, would determine?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's up to.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: It's up to, right. So the town could determine the amount on a town

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: bridge and

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: the agent can do it on an agent. So when

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you violate, I'm sorry, for the record, Danny Leonard, Legislative Council, when you violate that it's made a traffic violation in the next section, so if I just looking here and see

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

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: smugglers now.

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

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: We have a.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: One sec. Just gotta find my statute here. So traffic violations, the way that the way that they are enforced here is so, well, if you look at the other traffic violations, violation of Title 23 for which it's all violations of title 23 with no term of imprisonment and no penalty more than a thousand dollars or penalty of not more than a thousand dollars or traffic violations already. And then the other things in there are things like transportation of hazardous materials, violations of motor carrier safety standards. There's a number of them that have similar penalties if not more than a thousand dollars. And then traffic violations, I believe, are enforced through the judicial bureau.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: The judicial stuff.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So you end up having a hearing in court to determine actual penalty amount. So it's it's not a town by town thing where you could end up with, you know, let's say, the town of Cambridge assessing a penalty of $500, but then you go next door to Johnson, and they decide it's gonna be a thousand dollars.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Yeah. Are you okay with it? Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: If it's up to you, I think that that's helpful because I hope that municipalities would have used discretion with enforcement. The judicial bureau. And they won't pull over ambulances.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. So judicial bureau exactly.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Well, thank you. We're raising it

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to $10,000 for getting stuck in this fund at that.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: That I'm supportive of.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: So I think we're ready to go with six. So so we've been kind of

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: discussing section six because it's related to section five, and it basically just carries forward and Dingyin can correct me if I'm wrong, but it carries forward the functions of the violations already in statute. And then in line, on line eight of page nine incorporates this bridge violation posting, posting or closure of a bridge. And, Damian, you can specifically speak to the need to include these other, you know, smugglers' notch chain up areas out of service vehicles.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Right. So that is not actually changing what's defined as a traffic violation. It's making it consistent with the other subdivisions, which I'll tell you what the cross referenced statute number is actually referring to. And for whatever reason, when we added those to the statute, we just added the section number. And the rest of the sections will tell you, you know, violations of this title that don't carry a prison sentence and have a penalty of acts, violations related to hazardous materials under this chapter. And so this is just making a consistency when you see that reference, you know, oh, that's the stuff itch provision for Smuggler's Notch because that's a favorite of ours this year. I agree.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Smuggler's not favorite.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I know it's not our favorite, but not yet. Relating to authorizing railroad crossing violations. Can you just say what that is please?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: On, have to look into cross reference and then pull up the section.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: So just

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: apologize. Well, I can just say why I'm interested. It's just because railroad crossings are hazardous and trains are going faster and hopefully we're going to have more trains and we need to help people stop being hit by trains. Yep.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So just give me a second here to get to the right section.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would say, did this really connected directly to section five and our well, posting our Good eyes. Yeah. And that that's the railroad crossings are although a valid issue, not specifically related to what we're trying to do.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah. So it was here. But I can find that later.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the the penalty there, it relates to an employer who directs their driver of commercial motor vehicles to violate the provision of statute that relates to what commercial motor vehicles shall do when they get to a railroad crossing. So there are commercial motor vehicles that are required to stop at railroad crossings and look, and there are others that are required to slow to a speed sufficient to allow a clear vehicle tracks in both directions and then come to a stop before reaching the crossing. If the train is approaching in either direction, so they have to slow down, look, and stop if the train is approaching, or they can proceed if there's no train. And so there's a $4,000 penalty for employers who direct their employees to violate that provision.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Interesting and good. Okay. Thank you.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Sounds great.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Okay. I think we're all set with that section seven.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Section eight, can I just say where I'm correcting, I'm putting a

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: check next to five and six? Yeah.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Just to compare. Okay. Section seven, page nine, nine, 11 deals with the Public Transit Advisory Council. And the Public Transit Advisory Council has specific membership that's articulated in statute. And currently, the Community of Vermont Elders is an organization that's identified in statute as having a representative seat on the Public Transit Advisory Council. That organization has dissolved. And so what we are suggesting and AARP has agreed they were willing to do is they already participate in these meetings and seemed appropriate for them to be the designated seat for representing seniors and elders in the council. The other area of change for the Poe Transit Advisory Council is we have, two seats. One is a representative of private bus operators and taxi services and the other is a representative of Vermont inner city private bus operators. And currently, taxi services and bus operators, there's not been a consistent interface and taxi services have not participated in the Public Financing Advisory Council in in any manner, in as many years as we could under as we could see. And the current intercity bus operator in Vermont, is Premier, they are a private bus operator. So our suggestion, because we seem to be only able to get one representative for both of these recommended seats, that we eliminate the private bus operator and taxi services and then revise the representative Vermont inner city private bus operators to just be a representative of Vermont private bus operators. So that's what we're doing in Section seven.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I just would like an opportunity to talk offline with AOT about the second one. First one, I totally agree, and AARP has done a great job. Okay.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, but now I think

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Could, before we I'm okay with this section, but could you give me a list of who is actually on this advisory council?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Yep. I'll send that to the committee. It's on the governor's website.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And I'm on

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: it. Sure. Yeah. We meet quarterly.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Are are Just briefly, are municipalities involved at all? Are they bystanders? I

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: have to go back and look. I don't have that

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: list in front of me. I don't believe they are. And that's a really good suggestion. Yeah. Municipalities.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I take it back that because the only appointment that the governor makes for the Public Transit Advisory Council is one member at large. I don't think the list of of members is on his website, so I'll just get you the list from Ross.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And Okay. So let me ask this. This section and section eight. Or I mean, section seven. Excuse me. Yep. Would if we said okay to this and you go out and look and find somebody or or find a reason to not agree with the private bus operator, you come back to this, we'd open it up. But otherwise, for this purpose, let's say that Damian put it in the draft is ready to go.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: There might be others that like, yeah municipalities that might make sense and I also, I just, there's a few things that I want to talk to.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'm I'm I'm But if you'll open it up I'm I'm saying to everybody at the table, if there's a proposal to open up, we'll consider it. But for right now, if we don't get a proposal to open it up, he's gonna put it in the draft is okay. Yes.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I do think there's another buzz. Right. I think Greyhound's. Yeah.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I don't know that Greyhound has responded to.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Right, don't want to eliminate folks. That's one of the issues.

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: well, any private bus company, we're not saying it has to be Premier. We're saying a private bus company. It doesn't have to be inner center, inner city. It needs to be a private bus company that serves Vermont.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, but I think the inner city is important but that's something that we can

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: talk about. And we'll open it up if you can. Yes, okay. Got it.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Section eight, we are now moving to, page 10, line three. And this was, a section that was asked for by Green Mountain Transit related to their current municipal charter. And they felt that they needed, more specificity in statute in order to receive other sources of funding from or voluntary, such as voluntary local match contributions, grants, donations, and other non assessment revenues, which may be offered by municipal or other private or public sector entities. And so if you have questions about why they feel like they needed this language, you'd have to ask them. We have no problem with the language. Feel it just opens the world up of where they can receive their money from.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm very comfortable with the language.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: It seems like they can now more clearly they probably always could, but they can now more clearly get private donations and go outside of kind of their now declining unfortunate.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The hype Revenues. Making. Yeah. Can you this section, lift it, send it to Green Mountain Transit, and ask them to respond if they're favorable in an email so we have the email back from them? What's the section?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Section A.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Section A. Yeah. And if the committee's okay, I'm gonna mark this as okay. We just have

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: a couple little things on it. Okay. Like, just I I I think on on line 18, the adjective voluntary local match contributions, I don't think that's necessary and I think we have to start, well, they obviously need more revenue and we need to diversify the revenue and there might be something that would be the contract which could possibly be, would likely be voluntary but I just, I think that's put in there to make sure that we limit authority for the voluntary. So I just think it's worth the conversation.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I'd like to talk to them about that. Well, I'm, why don't we call this open and, and we'll look for the email back from them. And if that's not enough, then we'll get them on the screen. Thank you.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Just on that, you don't think that's, anticipated match contributions that a municipality would choose to offer to get better services, more match money obviously, increased services?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I think some municipalities would do that and are doing it. I just don't want it to limit. I don't want to limit it to that.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Does

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: that limit that?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well, just the voluntary. There's really anything, everything counts due is voluntary.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: So I don't know that that's necessary.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, it's not mandatory.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, that's true. I'm sorry. I should say that. And any funding that they provide.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is separate from and in addition to assessments for member municipalities. So GMTA is a member, under their charter, their member municipalities join in. And so there is a non voluntary local match contribution that may be in play here. This is separate and apart from that where GMTA comes to a municipality and says, we have a project that we think we can do, but we can't do the local match entirely on it. Would you be willing to kick in a portion of the local match is my understanding? I think it makes sense to have GMTA come in, but this is separate and apart from local match contributions that might be through the mandatory assessments for member municipalities. Okay. So that I think is the distinction they're trying to draw here is they want to provide clear statutory support and this is separate from the rest of this section is about the mandatory assessment process.

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

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so this is saying, you know, we're building our budget with these mandatory assessments and grants and other things that are already built in the state funding. And we also start including additional anticipated non assessment revenues such as voluntary local match contributions or donations or grants that we're able to get from organizations.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So my understanding is that they want to differentiate between the sort of mandatory, you're a member and granted the municipalities can always say we don't want pay if match anymore, we're going to stop being a member and not even actually.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And they have had that

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: happen, so

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I think it would be good if this committee gets a little bit of that knowledge. Right.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Hopefully we'll get an email that will clear some of this up. Personally, I've thought that they have they have had contributions from municipalities in the past. I don't know of any private donations, but on bus routes most communities have been expected to contribute something. So I'm a little unclear what that means in the change in the value structure. We'll see what they send back for an email. If we need to go beyond the email, we'll do that. Okay. Thank you. Okay,

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: so we're now on to Section nine. Section nine, relates to our authority to enter into public private partnerships. This has been in session law for a number of years for about three year chunks of time. We extended it once and now we're asking to extend it again. There is a anticipated potential that there might be a public private partnership similar to the one we did with Maplewood Vermont Travel Service Center, which is at the Berlin exit, Exit 7 Of I-eighty 9, where that acts as a welcome center within the state. And we're looking at, we have scoping money for looking at a similar welcome center in Swanton for the northern border area on I-eighty 9. And so this would extend the repeal of the P3 So it would extend the P3 lane.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Or it could be at the rest area, but it

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: could be at a totally new place.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: It could be at a totally new place location. That's why we're asking for the extension of the repeal for another three years. Did that also affect like getting airport? Yep, there could be airport P3s, there could be any number of types of P3s. We just haven't had any come forth

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: other than that maple wood.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: They all sentenced?

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Is it yes. But a question for later is I would just like to know why we're repealing them in the first place, but you can tell me that at another

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're not gonna repeat. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: You are repeating. No. Right. Well, we're

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: sending them. It was in the original Oh, I have

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: to repeal.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Original statute they they had

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: to repeal. This just It it certainly could. And it would just re repeal the repeal and just leave it into perpetuity for the agency to enter into P3s. That would be another way to approach it.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, I just don't know why we're doing that repeal though. Was that? What I was

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: gonna ask, but I don't need

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: to There

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: are some

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: people that don't really like P3s.

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

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Or they wanna have a little more, much say, more say.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Okay, so maybe a Pizzeria. I

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: don't know if they deal that way.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I know some people.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah, I don't know all of our.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I would feel much more favorable to a welcome center in Swan, given the fact that we got two just down the road and a welcome center in Alberg. And if I thought it was being subsidized privately. Just my

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But some people don't like the state subsidizing the private. They can see if

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: they can see it elsewhere. Right.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Interesting. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: How do we

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I'm I'm I'm fine to leave this and just learn more another time. Okay.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: But I think we're okay with section nine,

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: section 10. Okay. So section 10 relates to our section eleven eleven commercial highway access permits, and it could relate to any section eleven eleven highway access permit, not just commercial. And this is a case where we are asking for the narrowing of participation in appeals to be only able to be requested by the applicant or permittee. So the permittee might be somebody other than the applicant, the landowner, let's say. The scenario is adjacent landowners cannot use the Section eleven eleven appeal process to slow down a project their neighbor is trying

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: they don't like. And so that they don't have appellate abuse abilities.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And 111 are always just access.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Yeah, or working in the right of way sometimes also is a permit

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: 3.5 request. But mostly it's access.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Yeah, mostly it's being able to put in a driveway. It's nothing near you.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No. No. It's but

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: I think I was involved in it.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: In something like this? A realtor that is near me.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Don't know if

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you have an apple orchard?

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: No. No? I like that apple orchard. Well, I'll just say I have some hesitation always with kind of the reframing of what folks have access to when it comes to deciding about their community's land use. And if I'm understanding the point of the eleven eleven permit, it's kind of designed to help facilitate that process. So I guess I'm confused about other than maybe expediation of of these, What does the community gain in terms of local control? Like, I so if I live down the street and it would definitely impact my drive, I have no say now in the eleven eleven government. How are people you

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You could get involved in all one of those. But

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: you still can't.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is You can't

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: appeal it. This is just can't it.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So if I was originally a part of it, I could still, if I was in a butter essentially.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: If you were in a butter, you can still provide, feedback into the process but once a decision is made, it's only the applicant or the agency if it well, it's the applicant that can appeal it. Well, are And the agency would be

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: a permanent In guard the initial permit that you get, there are whole groups. There are site distance rules. Yep. There are a a whole number of rules on state highways to do that. Those we aren't changing. Okay. This would be the appeal.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Who who does the appeal, however, do you know?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Transportation board. Yeah.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: How many of jobs get appeal? Like, what's the average do you

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: have any scab? Oh, well, yeah. First

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: time I thought you're out and be like, I'm here. Yeah. It would be very helpful to understand that because I do think oftentimes regulations and permits get a bad rap when in reality they prevent long term disagreements and people being not included in decisions that affect them on a day to day basis. So I I I don't see a permit as like a a nightmare scenario. Like an appeal might actually make the project better for the people who are impacted by it. So I guess I just want to understand how many of these appeals are happening. Is it being misused? Are you seeing like lots and lots of appeals where folks live down the street and two years later go, wait a minute, this is annoying. Like I guess I'd like to understand like the scope of the problem because it seems like from my experience, I haven't heard a lot about this being a problem. So maybe there are specific examples I'm not aware of, but that kind of context would be really helpful for me to understand this section. So personally, would like to

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: leave it open for the question.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Are you going to have a substitute? I don't know yet,

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: but I'd like to leave

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: it open just so I can ask

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: for some put an okay by it and in the same manner that we said to Senator Harrison, if you have a specific change,

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm happy that. Well, would take this section out at this point. It would be my preference because I don't feel compelled to not allow people to appeal even if they're just the applicant.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Is the only what's the appeal process now?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: So right now, my understanding that the appeal process is that if a permit is issued and if it's, if a permit is issued right now, it could be the neighbor who says, I don't want those people to have a driveway next And to my so they are allowed to appeal in writing To the T Board. Well, first it goes to the agency. No, I think it goes straight to the T Board. I'm looking to Damien now.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Then

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: versus sort of what we are saying is that the applicant or the permittee would be the only party that could appeal this. So if we said no, you may not have this driveway access and it would have, there's a fairly narrow case where we can prevent somebody from having a driveway access already in statute. So it's basically taking that sort of narrow ability to prevent somebody from having a driveway, which we can barely make happen unless there's a safety issue. Yeah. And saying now, you know, anybody else could decide they don't like the fact that we allowed that person or denied that person, the ability to have that driveway access.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But you're only able to appeal on the same grounds that you could appeal it, you know, for safety reasons. Like, I I do think that there is a need. You know? Sometimes if new information comes up and people live very close to each other, and I just I guess I don't see if you can't just appeal because you dislike it. Like, that's not what you can write down. You have to have the same reason.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Think you can, but they probably won't get they won't get

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

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Permanent rule, but you can still delay the project. Yeah. I

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: would take possible. Mention. You can go on.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: You can say I want to deal with, you could even just say I

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: want to try once transportation board

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: review the third permit without reason other than I want

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: to You don't have to list a reason that's under the same criteria. You can just say I appeal.

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: it doesn't say specifically here that there has to be a certain criterion for requesting and writing, appellant review.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I mean, I would be open to things like that. You know. But I do think there's still like, if you have a really big industrial site that's I don't know. There's all sorts of examples where you might live on a nearby section of land that's impacted. And if you don't have a good process for someone negotiating that out through like a tea board, you get people fighting it out in other ways. You know, like, it becomes nastier if you don't have a process than if you do.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Well, there's a process.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: But you can't appeal it

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: if you disagree. There's I mean, I think not to confuse the development or redevelopment of properties for purposes other for whatever purpose that's going to be. That's municipal review or an active 15 review depending on the zoning regulations. This is simply about can they get access onto the state highway or not. And so the question is, who gets to appeal? Who can have an access onto the state? Yeah. It's all of our free copies.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Has any any appeal been

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: There has been a case recently which has consumed a significant amount of agency resources, keyboard resources, and so far, I don't know if they have a final determination on that yet. It's

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: Why don't we put this on hold? And move those. Well, they just need to

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: see what the stats are, like how many deals, hasn't the keyboard ever overruled the

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: agency? Yeah,

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: exactly. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it, yeah. And I

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: agree that glad we're doing this and just the way I see it is that this constrains that process significantly because if it's only the applicant or the permitee there would basically be only appeals for no's. So there's no appeal for

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: well, that. Looking for either substitute language or will take an up or down vote on this. Okay. Yeah. You'll either be substituted or will take an up or down vote on this. I have to say to you, you'd be shocked at how many people don't have an eleven eleven permit. If you have a house that was built on a a state highway that's before 1950, it doesn't have a permit. The you know, I can totally understand that, but we just applied for a permit. We were trying to use an existing driveway that was a farm access to 80 acres of farmland. So it had an agricultural right of way. We went to a house that was built in 1820, and we tried to access the same driveway to build a duplex. And when we went to apply for our eleven eleven on that driveway that we had done, got the legal right away, we found out they had no permits. So, and they had been through all of the Well this is an existing house that was built in the 1820s. I don't I personally don't think every driveway in the neighborhood should have needed to be involved in the appeal. So there is two sides to this. Sure.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And there's somewhere in the middle we

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: certainly will entertain anything you have on this and when we come back to it we'll go up or down.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I guess is it alright if

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I work with it would be Damian, I

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: assume, on this one related to Yeah. Maybe language around the appeals process only under, like, criteria that could be

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: oh, yeah.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. No. I think I'm happy to work with you on that. I think it it might be a long discussion about the criteria and Sure. Components because there's you know, it's it's not just driveways. It can be utility lines, green edge, etcetera. And

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: yeah. I think Well, 11 is that utility lines?

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So We permits must be obtained by anyone or any corporation wishing to use any part of the highway right of way on either the state or town highway system as described in this section, and it includes driveway entrances, installing pipes and wires on the highway, private water and sewer lines, project that's sorry. And then frontage roads and access for developments,

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: which I'm guessing is where Well, I I calling that person. Could 11:11 to run from a power pole on one side of the road to the other. And so I think that's a different process, so we depend on it. Nonetheless, let's move on to the next section. This is on hold and if we have language, we'll entertain it. Otherwise, we'll vote on it.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: And I assume this would affect, like wouldn't affect the existing, you wouldn't be taking this away from an act.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: No, no.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: This

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: would be like on passage going forward. Exactly.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: And can you tell us about the current, not now, but just can you send us information?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: I will ask Jeremy to put that in the other thing.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: The Grand Rose Angels.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: I don't know if I

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: can or can't send that information because it is an active legal case. We're just even like stats without names. Alright, the Transportation Alternatives Programs. This is a federal program that has its own like slot of money, identified amount of money that comes to the agency as part of the federal transportation authorization that happens every five years. And, the last time we had a reauthorization, the amount of money in the program was increased from about 2,200,000.0 to about 2 point excuse me, to about 4,400,000.0 that we would have to grant out on an annual basis during the five years of program. Several years ago when we were very focused on clean water, initiatives, there was a requirement put into the agency's granting process which would require 50% of the awards to be made to clean water related projects and then 50% could be used for bike ped and anything else that qualified under the TA program. What we have found is this 50% requirement for clean water projects has principally enabled towns to do salt sheds and, you know, do other projects which will result in phosphorus reduction. And we have found that the projects that have been proposed have become more expensive than the towns thought they would be. And so the grant award they have received hasn't covered the project or they didn't they couldn't find the additional money. So they backed out of those projects. And so we have this sort of bulk of money in the clean water category which has stayed in the clean water category which is federal money that is not being put in the ground for any purpose at this time. And we typically in this program have more applications than we have money to award. And we're currently at risk of losing federal funding, because we have a time limit on these TA funds, that in terms of how long we have to obligate them. So what we're asking for in order to, reduce the backlog of funds available is to lift the requirement that 50% of these funds be dedicated to clean water projects. So clean water projects would compete just like BikeFed and everything else, And to increase the maximum award from 600,000 to $1,200,000 for one year, so for this upcoming grant round, so that we can award projects of a larger scale. Oftentimes the projects that are brought forward, if it's a $600,000 max award, that's only covering maybe a half or a third or two thirds of a project and we find that towns are having to put together a TA award, a bike pet award, local funding, etcetera. So this would perhaps to move a project along more quickly because they're not out there trying to find other funding would bring down our excess balance and not be in the position of potentially losing federal funds. And then after this grant award year, the maximum award would go back down to 600,000 but it does not reinstate the fiftyfifty requirement between clean water projects and bike pet projects. So that's what this language does. So

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: I'm supportive in some regards related to the TAP funding, but if I understand correct, so you're, this is a move that was in part worked with House Transportation because they want to see more money go to bike pet infrastructure.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: So it's a total of 1,200,000.0. 1,200,000.0 would be the cap on a project. And would be a cap on

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

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: So an individual grant application could be for up to $1,200,000 in funding.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: And you have a total of one, this is around 1,200,000.0 in total. How much money do you have?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: Typically we right now have about $4,400,000 in monies to award, but we have more than that at this point because many grants have not moved forward. The monies haven't been obligated. And so we have in excess of 4,400,000.0 and I can get that number for you.

[Sen. Rebecca “Becca” White (Vice Chair)]: Oh, that makes more sense to me. So you have a total 4,400,000.0 and now half of it could go, so there would be about 2,200,000.0 available for BitePet projects?

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: No, all of it would be available. Any project and there is, it's actually on page 13 in line, five and six. Grant program funds shall be awarded for any eligible activity, including environmental mitigation projects relating to storm water and highways such as salt and sand sheds and infrastructure related projects and systems that will provide safe routes for non drivers. And so that's your sort of bike head area with those are the established priorities. So why am I thinking it's a fiftyfifty split? It used to be. That's what it is currently in statute. Shouldn't say used to be. Currently in statute says we can only award half the money to clean water projects and half the money to BiTEPED.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: And that's what you're crossing out.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: That's what we're crossing out. So we if we could all go to BiTEPED if we don't get any clean water applications or if the ones we get aren't competitive or whatever. So great. That's kind of

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: My concern is I want top priority. I personally like top priority, so I'm saying that sheds. Mhmm. I you know, small communities have a beer of a time getting money up for that, and and we've had that debate coming across the hall on that. I would say an eligible Provident, Salt and Shenzhen would be a priority. Yep. I mean, could list it to

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: be the top priority if that's what you're willing to do.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I personally would do that.

[Sen. Wendy Harrison (Clerk)]: Well at least for the next few years, mean the salinity that just so shocks you when Senator Watson said how salty our waters are becoming. Like sand

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: chips. Salty sands. It's all

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: in You the mix together another salt

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: and and Yeah. No. They mix it together and then it sits out in the open.

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: Right now I get tired. I thought there was something called a sand shed.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: No. I will tell you why I'm a little. If you go out Route 12 and you go back through Elmhurst, they they worked, I think, for fourteen years to get enough money to move their salvage sand pile, which was a 100 yards from Lake Elmwood up the yellow wafer. They kept putting nickels and dimes away forever to do it. I Yeah. Jerry, you won't be talking Well, what I like to say to Damian is is there a way to just say salt and sand sheds, she'll be upright.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So currently in right under where the alert states is by the changed fiftyfifty split language. So subdivision F2 provides that in evaluating applications, the agency shall give preferential weighted projects involving as a primary feature a bicycle or pedestrian facility. The you really if you want to give preferential priority to salt and sand sheds, you can either say involving as a that either involve construction of salt and sand shed or preferential weight into salt and sand shed projects and do projects involving as a priority primary feature a bicycle or pedestrian facility, or you could strike out the existing bicycle bike pad priority and replace it with salt and sand chest. Those would be your two options there, is you could use that language because that's that's basically saying give preferential weighting and then the agency determines the degree of preferential waiting and other circumstantial factors to consider when, determining whether, the waiting has been overcome and approving or denying the project.

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I personally would strike out the biped and put just the answer in. Was hoping to what the committee would like to do. I suspect if we touch this at all, it'll come up in the conference.

[Cameron Wood (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I like what the agency is suggesting just because

[Sen. Andrew Perchlik (Member)]: it gives them the flexibility because they might just have to guess, Oh, so the application might be here. So if you're required I'm I

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: I I don't wanna require. I would like it. I would like it to help from about priority.

[Damian Leonard (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Draft it both ways and

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: bring it back to us.

[Michele Boomhower (Agency of Transportation, Director of Policy, Planning & Intermodal Development)]: So I have availability. We're very close to the end. I have availability tomorrow morning. I can join you remotely. We can process that. Can

[Sen. Richard Westman (Chair)]: we be back here until 08:45?