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Committee questions timing, reserves for EV charger funds; asks for agency clarification on burn rates and mileage-based fee funding
Summary
On March 12 the House Transportation Committee questioned how and when electric-vehicle (EV) charger funds in draft Section 13 would be awarded and whether some of the dollars should be held as reserves while ACCD manages a limited award capacity.
On March 12 members of the House Transportation Committee questioned how and when electric-vehicle (EV) charger funds in draft Section 13 would be awarded and whether some of the dollars should be held as reserves. The exchange focused on the administration's capacity to spend allocated funds, the amount assigned to the Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) for charger grants, and a separate mileage-based user-fee pilot.
A committee member summarized testimony from earlier in the day and asked whether $3,000,000 intended for programming a mileage-based user fee could be preserved if the administration planned to delay charger awards; the member said, "we still want $3,000,000 to program the mileage based user fee. We don't have it. We have only a 700,000 we set aside." Another member said ACCD planned to set some funds into buffer reserves for regions not yet ready to deploy chargers and that the agency had a limited "burn rate" for awarding and spending grants.
Members voiced competing priorities. Some said the public expected EV-fee revenue to flow directly into charger infrastructure and worried about delaying awards; others expressed support for a cautious approach if awardees cannot absorb funds quickly because of technical barriers—transformer upgrades and other site constraints were cited in testimony as limiting deployment pace. One legislator noted the policy goal is broad EV adoption and suggested subsidies should reach places where deployment is feasible; another said the committee should avoid penalizing agencies that manage money conservatively.
Committee members also noted ongoing agency work on a mileage-based user-fee redesign and that Green Mountain Transit had submitted comments tied to project cancellation language in the draft. Staff said the agency would provide additional information and a proposal on cancellation provisions and that Damien (staff) would circulate updated materials within 24 hours.
No formal motion or vote occurred on Section 13 during the meeting. Members asked staff and agency representatives for clarifications on ACCD's capacity to obligate funding, the timing of awards, the possibility of designating reserves or buffers, and the interaction between charger grants and the mileage-based user-fee programming.
