[A]s the end of the legislative session approaches, the Senate and House transportation committees are pressuring each other to support provisions the other chamber opposes.
In an effort to push the House to exempt older cars from emissions testing, the Senate has tacked the measure onto a piece of must-pass legislation.
The House Transportation Committee, which is reluctant to approve the exemption, has added two of its own priorities onto a separate bill that has to pass this year.
Those provisions, which would allow police to pull over drivers if they’re not wearing seatbelts, and allow emergency vehicles—other those that belong to law enforcement officials— to use flashing blue lights, face strong resistance in the Senate.
Earlier this year, the Senate passed S.84, a bill that would exempt cars more than 10 years old from emissions testing to shield some low income Vermonters from having to make regular, expensive car repairs.
“What we want to do is just protect the folks in Vermont that can’t afford to make those repairs,” said Sen. Dick Mazza, D-Grand Isle, who chairs the Senate Transportation Committee.
The House also wants to decrease the financial burden for low-income Vermonters who have to repair their vehicles to meet emissions standards. But Rep. Curt McCormack, D-Burlington, the chair of the House Transportation Committee, doesn’t want to eliminate the requirement for cars to meet those standards.
“With that bill we’re solving an income problem with air pollution,” McCormack said. “The way to solve that income problem is to somehow pay to get the cars fixed for those that have expensive repairs and low income and can’t afford it.”
Last week, the Senate Transportation Committee added a more limited emissions exemption that would apply to cars that are 15 years or older, instead of 10, into the transportation bill, H.529, a piece of legislation the Legislature must pass before the end of the session.
The Senate also modified the transportation bill to establish a new program to provide financial assistance to help low-income residents purchase hybrid vehicles or vehicles with high gas mileage.
With these two changes, Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, said he hopes the House could support rolling back the emissions requirements. Restricting the exemption to apply to fewer cars, Vermont would still be on track to meet federal and state requirements for emissions reductions, he said.
But McCormack signaled Wednesday that he still wasn’t on board.
“Of course what they did in the T bill is not as bad as S.84—but it’s bad,” McCormack said.
By exempting the older vehicles, the state would be reducing fewer emissions than it does under current law—Department of Environmental Conservation estimates the reduction would be 30% lower.
McCormack said he’d be open to raising money to help low-income drivers pay for repairs by adding a 50 cent, or $1 fee to car registrations or inspection stickers. He is also interested establishing a volunteer program that could help people make the repairs.
In his own attempt to pressure the Senate to vote on House priorities, McCormack’s committee added a provision that would give police officers the authority to pull over drivers who aren’t wearing seat belts to the miscellaneous Department of Motor Vehicles bill, S.149.
While drivers are already required under Vermont law to wear seat belts, police are not allowed to pull them over if they fail to do so. McCormack wants to give the police that power, to increase safety on the roadways, and encourage more people to wear seat belts.
He pointed out that nearly half of the people in Vermont who died in car crashes last year weren’t wearing seat belts.
“We do not want to fine anybody, no citations,” McCormack said. “What we want is to raise the level of seriousness of it.”
But the Senate opposes giving police the authority to pull over drivers for not wearing seatbelts, over civil rights concerns. In other states, seat belt related stops have been used “disproportionately to stop people of color relative to white drivers,” Ashe said.
“We are very nervous about a policy which we know in other jurisdictions has resulted in people of color being pulled over for what are viewed as investigative stops. It is not about the seat belts,” he said.
McCormack also added a provision that would allow some emergency vehicles—particularly fire department vehicles carrying equipment— to use flashing blue lights, like police cruisers. He said motorists on the road aren’t paying “nearly enough attention” to emergency vehicles, and that the blue lights could fix the problem.
Ashe said he opposes letting other vehicles use the lights because it would create confusion for drivers.
He said the House added the seat belts and blue lights provisions to the DMV legislation “because they know the Senate doesn’t like either one of them and wouldn’t pass standalone bills to do those things.”
In the House Government Operations Committee Thursday, McCormack also sought to get the seat belt measure tacked onto S.54, the bill that would legalize cannabis sales, and will include other provisions to increase highway safety.
The chair of the committee indicated that she supports adding the seatbelt language to the bill.
