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Weekly Legislative Report 10

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Weekly Legislative Report 10 Inside this Issue: Transportation Bill ..................................................... 1 Allowing 16- and 17-Year Olds to Vote ................ 5 Act 250 ......................................................................... 2 Elsewhere in the State House .................................. 5 Clerk Fees ......................................................................... 3 The NLC Congressional City Conference ................. 6 Hanging Banners over Highways ................................. 4 New Bills .......................................................................... 7 The Transportation Bill The House Transportation Committee is currently putting the finishing touches on this year’s transportation bill. Local officials who attended a joint hearing of both transportation committees at Local Government Day strongly endorsed a gas tax increase to fund municipal transportation programs, however the House committee ultimately decided not to take up that proposal this year. The committee did, however, agree to increase funding for Town Highway Aid by $1,102,710. The bill also would expand the potential uses of the Town Highway Aid Program beyond town highway construction, improvement, and maintenance and bicycle routes to sidewalks. The governor’s proposal of $25,982,744 continued a years- long streak of level funding, so the 4.2 percent increase to $27,085454 is most welcome! The bill includes language that allows the Agency of Transportation (VTrans) to cancel a municipal capital project upon the request of a municipality, provided that notice of the cancellation is included in the agency’s annual proposed transportation program. The formula for allocating specific percentages funds to public transit purposes would be repealed, and VTrans would be directed to distribute federal funds to public transit systems through an annual competitive program that implements public transportation policy goals, advances economic development objectives, and achieves – where possible – geographic balance in funding. Policy goals include: • providing basic mobility for transit dependent persons, • expanding public transit service in rural areas and increasing ridership statewide, • access to employment including creation of demand-response service, • mitigating congestion to preserve air quality, • decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, • sustaining the highway network, and • advancing economic development objectives. VLCT Weekly Legislative Report No.10 March 15, 2019 Page 1 The bill would direct the Public Service Department and the agencies of Natural Resources and Transportation to establish and administer a new and used electric vehicle (EV) purchase and lease incentive program for Vermont residents. Any agency or department could establish fees to use an EV charging stations controlled by the state; those revenues would go into the Transportation Fund. The Public Utility Commission and Department would no longer have jurisdiction over companies that offer EV charging stations and are not otherwise regulated by them. Transportation Alternatives Program grants would be capped at $300,000. The program committee would disband and grant decisions would instead by made by VTrans. The committee is also considering adding language to the bill that would direct VTrans and the Joint Fiscal Office to conduct a technical analysis of commuter rail service using self-propelled diesel rail cars between St. Albans, Essex Junction, Burlington, and Montpelier. A report on its feasibility would be due to the legislature by next January. Once the bill is voted out of House Transportation, it will be sent to the House Appropriations Committee, voted on the House floor, and then sent to the Senate Transportation Committee. So there is still a long row to hoe on this bill and it will take a concerted effort from local officials to retain the increased Town Highway Aid. Please take time to thank the committee members for having considered transportation needs at the local level. They are Curt McCormack, Barbara Murphy, Timothy Corcoran, Mollie Burke; Michael McCarthy, Patricia McCoy, David Potter, Constance Quimby, Brian Savage, Mary Sullivan, and Rebecca White, and their contact information is posted on the House Transportation Committee webpage. Act 250 This week, the House Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife Committee continued to take testimony on its draft bill to overhaul Act 250, action prompted by recommendations of the 2018 Report of the Act 250 Commission. The most recent draft (19-0040 draft 5.3) does not contain many changes from earlier versions, which means it is still a very worrisome proposal, particularly for rural parts of the state. The Legislative Council prepared a comparison of the proposals from the administration to amend Act 250 (H.197 and S.104) and the committee draft bill, however there has been little discussion among committee members of the administration’s proposals. Most concerning to municipalities is the expanded jurisdiction that the committee draft bill would establish for Act 250 layered on the existing extensive framework of local zoning, state, and even federal regulation. It is hard not to think the effort to expand jurisdiction has its basis in an essential distrust of those other permitting entities. This week, the committee received extensive testimony on the issue of jurisdiction. Attorney Liam Murphy explained the problem in stark terms. He pointed out, as many others have done, that the bill “proposes extending Act 250 jurisdiction to any commercial or industrial development over 1 acre or an undefined number of subdivisions if the project is outside an ‘existing settlement.’” “According to the Vermont Woodlands Association,” Murphy testified, “Vermont is 78 percent forested, with 4.46 million acres of forest … Adding to forested areas, there are many farms and fields outside of ‘existing settlements’. It is likely that at least three quarters of the state will be deemed to be ‘rural or working landscape’ and the subdivision of a potentially small number of lots in such areas anywhere in the state will require an Act 250 permit.” Murphy highlighted the bill’s expansion of jurisdiction to “any VLCT Weekly Legislative Report No.6 March 15, 2019 Page 2 subdivision (even a two-lot subdivision) or commercial or industrial development over one acre if such is within a ‘critical resource’ area, … meaning a river corridor, significant wetland, land at or above 2000 feet, a ridgeline, land characterized by slopes greater than 15 percent and shallow depth to bedrock.” The bill would also shift appeals of Act 250 decisions from the Environmental Division of the Superior Court to a newly re-created Vermont Environmental Review Board (VERB). As well, VERB would be responsible for Act 250 administration, rulemaking, enforcement, enhanced designation decisions for municipalities, regional plan approval, mapping approvals, and Agency of Natural Resources permits. Staffing needed to sustain all those responsibilities would be considerable. While we have heard complaints over the years about the Environmental Court being cumbersome, slow, and not particularly easy to navigate, attorneys who frequently work on Act 250 and land use cases testified against creating a new board that makes the rules, administers the rules, enforces the rules, and hears appeals of decisions made pursuant to its rules. As we have stated previously, the process in the bill for winning “enhanced designation” – and, thus, exemption from Act 250 – in designated areas sets a bar that is much higher than even the comprehensive application and approval process which towns go through today to achieve a designation from the Downtown Development Board. Both the administration’s proposal and the committee draft bill would impose additional requirements on cities and towns to qualify for enhanced designation. The committee draft would require municipalities to assume responsibility for reviewing projects’ compliance with Act 250 criteria – not only in the designated centers but municipality wide, which would include critical habitat, forest blocs, connecting habitat, rural and working lands. Much more work needs to be done to unravel all the concerns and issues raised in this draft bill. In no way is it either a streamlining of the land use permitting process or a reduction in redundancy of effort to get projects permitted. Local officials should continue to make sure that their representatives understand the details of the legislation. They should also continue to watch this report for developments in the committee discussion and be prepared to involve themselves in the discussion by calling on their legislators. Clerk Fees Recently, a group consisting of members from the Vermont Municipal Clerks’ and Treasurers’ Association (VMCTA), Vermont Bankers Association (VT Bankers), Vermont Bar Association (VBA), and Vermont Association of Realtors (VAR) met to discuss a request to increase the fees charged by town clerks for various services they provide to the public. The meeting was in response to a proposed fee increase request. (See Weekly Legislative Report No. 4.). The request was made because most town clerk fees have not been increased in at least ten years and also due to last year’s Act 155 , which requires VLCT and VMCTA to submit (1) an annual report on fees collected and requested over the next three years, (2) an assessment of each fee in existence, and (3) a summary of any new fee requests. On Tuesday, the House Government Operations
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