SmartTranscript of House Energy and Digital Infrastructure 2025-02-28 10:15am

[Member Bram Kleppner]: Alrighty. We are live on YouTube. [Chair Kathleen James]: Super. Alright. Be with. Thanks, everybody, and welcome to the house energy and digital infrastructure committee. It is Friday, February twenty eight. And we are continuing our practice of ensuring that everyone who introduces a bill that's referred to our committee has an opportunity to pitch the bill to our team. So we are, here today with representative Rob North who's gonna talk to us for maybe ten or fifteen minutes about h one hundred and fifty nine. And, rep North, we'll go around and introduce ourselves. We always allow everybody in the room the opportunity to introduce themselves, and then we'll turn it over to you for the record. So Yeah. I'm representative Kathleen James from the Bennington four district. [Witness Rob North]: Scott Campbell from St. Johnsbury, California, Essex. Richard Bailey, Boyle two. Chris Morrow, Wyndham Windsor, Bennington. Michael, Southworth, California two. Christopher Allen, Rutland four. Garrett Torrey, Washington Duke. [Member Bram Kleppner]: Graham Kleffner, chitin thirteen, Burlington. Okay. [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: On the screen. Laura Sebelia, Wyndham two. Jack Locker, committee assistant. Great. What are yes. Let's just [Witness Rob North]: Keith Narsden, Ferrisberg. I'm just here in support of Rob. Great. [Witness Thomas Weiss]: Thomas Weiss. I am a civil engineer resident of and spent last year in some of the public utilities commissions proceedings in the. [Chair Kathleen James]: That's super. Thank you. Alright. For the record. [Member Bram Kleppner]: Yes. Good morning. [Witness Rob North]: My name is representative Rob North. I live in Ferrisburg. I represent the Greater Virginia's area, and I serve on the environment committee in the house. So so I guess I [Representative Troy Hendrick]: would like to share with you a presentation. [Witness Rob North]: Jack showed me how to do it. Let's see if I can remember how to do it. Oh, we gotta hit a, like, share button first. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: Right. Now [Witness Thomas Weiss]: you get to pull up the PowerPoint. [Witness Rob North]: There we go. So it's good [Witness Thomas Weiss]: to have. Okay. Yes. [Witness Rob North]: I'm here to talk about h one fifty nine, which is a a simple bill to just repeal in its entirety the renewable energy standard, r e s. Okay. Why do we wanna repeal the renewable energy standard? Primarily for three top level reasons, affordability, reliability, and prosperity. And, really, the the prosperity is simply the result of affordability and reliability. If we have affordable energy and we have reliable energy, that directly leads to the ability for all to prosper without affordable energy. You end up being severely stunted in the ability for all members of the society to prosper. Might make note that Vermont pays fifty percent above the median US electric rate. I'll show some details on that in a moment. And under the category of reliability, we'll talk a little bit about the fact that renewable energy, notably wind and solar, are not reliable energy sources. So let's talk about that high cost. The renewable energy drives high cost. It's it's not lower cost. It drives cost. All of the New England states have very similar laws to what Vermont has, renewable energy standard type laws. And, thus, all ten of the New England state oh, I'm sorry. All six of the New England states are in the top ten most expensive electric rates. You can see on the right hand side, and I don't know you can't read it specifically, but you can see you can see highlighted in yellow are the are the six New England states plus New Jersey and New York, which also have res type laws, and they're all right at the top at the top of the list. The green lines represent the median price for electricity throughout the fifty states, within the United States. And a re reason why there's two of them is because I have two columns, one for, last December's energy prices and one for this January's energy price. They're very similar. Things don't change much, but I thought I'd show two just for example. But the electric rate that we pay in Vermont, eighteen and a half cents per kilowatt hour, is fifty percent higher than the than the median rate throughout the United States of [Representative Troy Hendrick]: about twelve point four, twelve and a half [Witness Rob North]: cents per kilowatt hour. And so comparing ourselves to the other New England states is, really not giving, a fair or a broad view because all of the New England states have the same kind of laws in place that that we have. So we're [Member Bram Kleppner]: all up near the top of [Witness Rob North]: the bracket. However, New Hampshire, just this past week, got out of its, renewable energy standard. So that that was big news. Interestingly, Vermont was the last one in of the New England states. We were the sixth one in, to to put a RES law HIPAA laws in place. So it's not like we were leaning the charge, plowing the snow here on this. We were kind of following the rest, and, now it looks like they're starting to to beg off for the reasons that I'm talking about here today. Okay. So why? How how does renewable energy drive high cost? Well, if you define renewable as it's defined in our renewable energy standard as wind, solar, hydro, and biomass, then, and you take a look at how those prices per kilowatt hour or in this case is per megawatt hour, compare to other types of, energy sources. You can see that wind and solar are out on the right hand side, costing much more. When you take into account in the levelized cost of energy, the overbuilding and curtailment. What what so what is that? It's complex words for the fact that that and we'll talk about this a little bit. How unreliable, how sickling, how up and down the availability of wind and solar energy are. That there there's there's no sun shining at night, and there's frequently days where it's calm. So you have to build between three and six times more energy capacity for of wind and solar to, on average, get the amount of energy you're looking for. So you have to build way more, and we'll talk about that in a moment. I got a chart on time. That's it. So solar, net metering, it turned out, if you specifically focus on solar, and you're really specifically talking about, well, why do we do if you if if the concept behind doing solar is to extract or prevent emitting more carbon dioxide into the air as a carbon reduction. It turns out that, net metering is the most expensive way, in terms of, extracting or or preventing carbon from going into the atmosphere into the into the environment. There are much more effective, much more efficient ways. So you can see solar net metering, for large solar, a hundred fifty kilowatt is, about three thousand dollars. I think that's per ton of carbon saved, whereas solar net metering at at the house level, individual house five kilowatt type sizes are are didn't even throw on the chart. It's nine nine thousand dollar per per ton of carbon save. Whereas if you just simply go with weatherizing, you have just the least expensive energy is the energy you didn't use. Right? So weatherizing, reducing energy usage through primarily, really, I mean, the Vermont efficiency, the electric efficiency portfolio. Just got [Representative Troy Hendrick]: the whole host of things to [Witness Rob North]: do that, and that is much more efficient at preventing carbon than than installing car solar panels. Moving on. So solar net metering has cost for monitors to date. If we project ahead through twenty twenty five at the the given trend, five hundred and forty four million dollars, it's almost half a billion dollars in total above and and that what the way this is calculated, you know, in accordance to talking with TJ Poor from the Department of Public Service, is how much more we've paid for electricity generated by renewable sources, notably net metering, in this case, is solar, over what the standard electric rate is you can buy off the New England grid. And just accumulate that from the time we started doing this in two thousand ten to today, you're over, yes, a billion dollars. Alright. So but people frequently ask, well, but we're in we're in a a significant climate change environment, and and don't we need to do our part? Don't we need to be out there leading, doing what, what Vermonters do best, which is leading the way toward toward an environmental conservation? Well, we are doing way more. We're in fact, we're doing seven times more than our part already. If you just look at the per capita spending on solar subsidies, Vermont is seven times higher than the US average. So we are already by far doing doing our part. You know? And, you know, it's costing us fortune. So let's now so that's the whole expense issue and and on affordability surrounding renewable sources, specifically focusing, there really heavily on on solar and and that's one of the wind. Now let's talk a little bit about, the unreliable nature of wind and solar. Everybody knows that when there's solar panels and and a windmill, if there's no wind and no sun, you get no electricity. Right? You're you're dependent on on the weather for that. So it required overbuilding. As as I mentioned before, it turns out for windmills, you gotta build three times more capacity for wind electric generation and six times more solar capacity for for solar electric generation to get on average the the amount that you're looking for. So, like, for example, if you wanted to get a hundred kilowatt I'm just I'm just picking a number. A hundred kilowatt on average out of the solar panel, you have to install six hundred kilowatts worth of panels so that on average over the year, you, can produce one per kilowatt. And and that's just because the sun doesn't shine at night, it's cloudy, you may get covered with snow. You know, there's there it's it's about fifteen percent, fifteen to twenty percent effectiveness rate and and wind the the the same. It's about a one to thirty five percent effectiveness rate. So if if we were if we were to go all in and say, well, we want a hundred percent renewable in Vermont. And yeah. So what the the graph on the upper right just shows the this was in in the Midwest, the actual graph in time where where there are a multitude of grids. This is focusing on the BISO grid of the I think it's the the mid mid America ISO grid. This is what actually happens and and what the available electric power from wind and solar looked like. And you could see that that's that looks very tiny. The but the idea is just to see how much it goes up and down. But there's that that, brief span there. This was, back in in, February a couple years ago when when they had that storm in the in the mid Midwest when all we got to Texas where there was north? Yes. [Chair Kathleen James]: Wondering how many slides you have left. We have our next witness here. I wanna allow time for a few few comments and questions. So we do fifteen minute blocks. [Witness Thomas Weiss]: Yep. Okay. What what what time do [Witness Rob North]: we actually start? I should have noted that. [Chair Kathleen James]: It was like We started at ten fifty. Yep. [Witness Rob North]: So I got five more minutes. Great. Thank you. [Chair Kathleen James]: Well and we need allow time for a few questions [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: to come. [Chair Kathleen James]: I just wanted I just wondered how how many slides you have left. Yep. [Witness Rob North]: Just a couple more. [Chair Kathleen James]: Okay. Just [Witness Rob North]: a couple more. So, yeah, we would have to cover Vermont with thirty thousand acres of solar arrays and and cover two hundred and twenty miles of bridge top turbines to to get to a hundred percent renewable. I don't know if anybody wants all of our ridged up covered with wind turbines. And then also, we're therefore, we provide battery storage because [Representative Troy Hendrick]: if you when the when the end of end [Witness Rob North]: of the valley, and battery storage is extremely expensive. Just one day's worth of battery storage to cover Vermont's energy. It's about two billion dollars, whereas you can install a cyclic gas turbine generator for about half that cost that reliably supplies all of Vermont's needs. Alright. So it's also so, therefore, it's duplicate energy. Wind is solar are unreliable, calm, cloudy, nighttime. So it required a hundred percent duplicate standby reliable energy. So you can't just have renewable. You've gotta also have the the, the standard forms of of energy production so that you can deal with the the troughs in the curve, when, renewable energy is not available. So right now right now, ISO New England is paying fossil fuel power plants to sit idle to ensure that we have the necessary reliable backup power. These are called capacity or out of market payments. We're doing this right now. We're paying for twice the energy. So we're paying for electricity that isn't being generated. In conclusion, Veronters need you to repeal the renewable energy standard for the reason of affordability, reliability, and prosperity. You can't have you can't have both. You can either have reliable, affordable grid, or you're gonna have all in wind and solar subsidies. You can't [Representative Troy Hendrick]: have both. [Witness Rob North]: So I highly recommend that you take h one fifty nine off the wall, repeal the rest, and support the governor's energy bill two eighty nine. Depends on if we're all finished. [Chair Kathleen James]: We we probably have and representative Hedrick, I'm sorry. Can you stay a few okay. Great. We probably have a few questions or comments from the committee. Representative Campbell? [Representative Troy Hendrick]: I guess I'm just wondering what is your what would be alternative? Just keep burning fossil fuels. Is that I think that's, you know, part of it? [Witness Rob North]: I am perfectly happy. In fact, I I am right now looking into putting some solar panels on my house. But what I don't want to happen or continue to happen is the is pouring state money into the, essentially, purchasing of all of that by with all the incentives that we have currently to the the res. If if people wanna do it on their own, like like I [Member Bram Kleppner]: may do it, I I have [Witness Rob North]: a friend who lives completely off grid and, yes, solar panels up. So he's not looking at the net metering reasons why he just wants to be independent, collect his own energy. Great. I think I think we've and Vermonters are really good at doing that. Right? We're really good at being environmentally conscious and and doing that. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: So just a [Witness Rob North]: On an individual level, that seems like Yep. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: You know, that's that's a great thing, but [Witness Rob North]: I wonder what how how that what [Representative Troy Hendrick]: how do what do we do as as a society, as an economy Yeah. [Witness Rob North]: In Vermont and in in New England. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: New England and power is expensive, not just because certainly not actually not even primarily because of renewables. It's just an expensive region Yeah. Because of, like, generation. I think one of the reasons why [Witness Rob North]: it's so expensive is is we have have gotten out of the nuclear business. I think we bring nuclear back. That's a very inexpensive way of generating electricity. [Chair Kathleen James]: Representative Clinton? [Witness Thomas Weiss]: Thank you. You know, [Member Bram Kleppner]: I'm noticing your bumper sticker on your computer that says Vermont, we were green before green was cool, and I'm wondering if we will continue to be green after green stops being cooled. And would hope that we would. So you and I have talked, and we talked about the high prices of electricity in New England. And, you know, reconciling the data you had with what we heard from the PUC, I spent some time with the numbers, and I apologize. I didn't have time to avoid springing this on you here without giving you time to to think about it. But I would point out just just a couple things that I believe to be true. One is that the PUC testified that the res is increasing our prices by about our electricity price by about four percent now. So the fifty percent gap between median and where we are, like, only four percent of that is the res. And so I was curious, well, what are the other reasons? And from the analysis that I read, New England in general is high, and, you know, New Hampshire's res was rather less demanding than ours, the one they're getting rid of. And so, presumably, we had an even smaller effect on their prices, presumably. I don't know that. But, you know, the the energy industry analysts suggest that New England's prices in general are high because we rely on expensive imported fossil fuels. And in other parts of the country, you know, Texas has a huge amount of solar, and they also so they produce their own solar, and they produce their own natural gas and their own oil and all that stuff. You know, Wyoming mines its own coal and uses uses that. So I think we can't attribute much of our prices to to the res. Again, the PUC said it was four percent. And as we go to a hundred, it it may be as much as eight percent on our electric bills. The other bit of quick math I did, you know, again, not not at all questioning the the number that we have spent five hundred and forty four million dollars more than we would have without it. But on a per person per month basis, it's like six bucks a month. And I'm not saying, you know, for family of four, that's twenty four dollars a month. That's real money. But [Witness Rob North]: it's just [Member Bram Kleppner]: a different way of looking at what sounds like a very big number. Yeah. [Witness Rob North]: It it it is it is a very big number. And I think if you if you heard, TJ, before all the way out, you would have understood that that small four percent number is just the price of the RECs, the renewable energy credits, which is a small fraction [Member Bram Kleppner]: of that five hundred and [Witness Rob North]: forty four million dollars. That's not the over market price that we're paying for the solar and [Representative Troy Hendrick]: then energy energy we're generating. [Witness Rob North]: That's the net metering over over market price. [Chair Kathleen James]: Representative Sebelia, I see you hovering in the sky. [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: Thanks, madam chair, and I apologize for not being in the committee with you. Representative North, I'm not feeling well and trying to keep from contaminating the committee. Just two questions I had for you. You're aware that the h two eighty nine, the governor's proposal does not in fact call for the repeal of the rest? [Member Bram Kleppner]: Yes. [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: Okay. And then the other is on if you have had the opportunity to look at the ISO New England app, which allows us to see what we are what the resources are on the grid at this time as representative Kleppner noted. Get a pretty high amount of natural gas, although lower than than it typically is right now. We're running about thirty three percent natural gas in New England, thirty two percent nuclear, and twenty two percent renewables. Have you had the opportunity to [Witness Rob North]: Yes. [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: Log on to that? It's pretty cool. [Witness Rob North]: Yeah. Yeah. I have. And which is one of the points I was trying to make earlier that just comparing ourselves to all of the New England. Granted, that's a grid we're all we don't have a whole lot of choice going outside of that grid. But all of the New England states have the same kind of laws and flips that I've Well, [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: they're all Yes. [Member Bram Kleppner]: This may all be rendered. I just pulled up the ISO website, and it shows the price of electricity in all the New England states right now is zero. So I think we're in good we're in good shape. [Chair Kathleen James]: Alright. We are over time, though, unless folks have a final [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: comment. Madam chair. [Chair Kathleen James]: Yeah. Perfect. [Participant/Assistant Jack Locker]: Sorry just to finish my last, week. So, you know, other states have a more abundant renewable fracked gas, which I think is pretty opposite what we have seen in terms of what we would expect Vermonters to support and probably New Englanders to support. We've seen expansions of natural gas lines defeated in our state to the south and also have much more renewables for wind out in the Midwest and solar. And so our reliance on imported fossil fuels contributes greatly to our volatility for sure in our pricing. So I thank you for the detailed presentation. [Chair Kathleen James]: Alright. Thanks so much, everybody. And thank you yeah. Thank you, representative North. Yeah. [Member Bram Kleppner]: Thanks, Rob. Alright. [Chair Kathleen James]: Appreciate your time. And representative Hedrick, sorry to keep you waiting. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: If I can get you back on time. [Chair Kathleen James]: What? We started a little bit late, which is our our fault. Alrighty. We have another bill introduction. And for the record. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: Hello. We have for the record, my name is Troy Hedrick. I'm a representative from Burlington. Representative Kleffner, I have good news for you. I think I could say Bill's family is that six dollars a month. [Chair Kathleen James]: It's wonderful. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: Yeah. This is bill h two sixty five eliminating convenience fees on municipal utility payments. I I just wanna talk a little bit about the genesis of this bill because it's not necessarily one that was mine. And we haven't seen I don't think no. We haven't seen a lot of by request bills. So for new folks, sometimes you'll see a bill get introduced with a parenthetical by request. Essentially, that means not my idea, but I've been asked to introduce this. I'll give you an example. This is a tangent. I still think I'll have you back on track. So I go to my neighborhood planning assembly meetings, and and that's where this came from too. But prior to that, somebody came up to me and said, hey, Troy. I don't think college students should be able to vote in municipal elections. But this isn't gonna be pitching a bill to me. And so I stopped him and I said, you know, I we're gonna start on very different sides of this coin. I'm a big fan of inclusive democracy. I have literally spent my entire professional career celebrating and encouraging college students to become involved. Nonetheless, I listened, and I drafted the vote request on his behalf that would prohibit college students from voting in these elections and presented it back to him. I said, this is this is I checked in with lead counsel, everything. I would have introduced that by request. Right? That would have flagged the body to say, did not wanna do this, but here we are. This is similar, but I didn't feel the need to flag it because I think it's an interesting question and one that probably merits some consideration. Let me do a very brief what this bill does, what this bill does not do. It's very simply. It's pretty straightforward bill. I'm not saying it's not necessarily an absolutely palatable bill, [Witness Rob North]: but it [Representative Troy Hendrick]: it prohibits convenience fees. Municipal utilities would be barred from barred from imposing additional charges such as processing or convenience fees on ratepayers who are choosing to make those payments through for their utility bills, online methods, electronic methods. It mandates the absorption of the cost, the resulting cost to the municipalities. That's how this gets socialized. It doesn't go back to all repairs. It goes back to the municipalities into their general operating budgets, ensuring that repairs are not directly burdened by the anticipated increase in costs. The bill would ensure financial transparency. It requires that municipalities disclose the costs related to online payment systems in their annual budgets and clearly identifies any impact those increasing costs would have on rate increases. Briefly defines utilities, so providers of electric, water, wastewater, or communications, encourages more cost efficient payment systems. So it asks the state treasurer, tasks them with offering guidance to municipalities on either negotiating favorable terms with a third party payment processor or exploring fee free payment options such as automated clearinghouse ACH bank to bank to bank transfer to the service systems. And then it also proposes a grant program, secretary of state in collaboration with the treasurer and the legal cities and towns would be directed to design a grant program aimed at existing municipalities with transitioning to a more modern, cost effective online payment systems that don't necessarily have a community experience. Let me do a very quick what this bill does not do. It does not mandate any sort of specific payment platform. The bill does not require municipalities to adopt any particular online payment platform or service provider. It does not eliminate traditional payment methods by any way. It doesn't compel ratepayers to use online payment systems. It does not or, you know, more traditionally, it doesn't outlaw more traditional payment options like walking down to the utility and writing a check like that. It does not provide any state funding. The bill does not allocate state funds to cover the cost municipalities might incur. It does require municipalities to absorb that through their operating budgets. It does not in any way regulate private utilities. So the provisions apply solely to municipal utilities. Yeah. Really, this is an equity so this came out of literally a constituent. I had one of their I don't remember which. One of their utility bills with them and said, what is this? Why why am I paying a convenience fee? That doesn't feel very convenient to me? And start we started talking. I said, do you want me to draft this up? So I did. And that is what is before you at age two sixty five. Really, by eliminating additional fees, this is a matter of equity for lower income folks who that might be an impact. Right? I I personally I I observed the cost. I understand why it's there. There are folks who for whom this would make a difference on a monthly basis. That's sort of the rationale for putting this forward. I always do anticipate questions. I'm more than happy to whip through my anticipated questions. Or if you wanna just toss-up questions, I'm more than happy to do that too. [Chair Kathleen James]: So representative Salesforce? [Witness Rob North]: Thank you. Was there any thought or looking into how the cost bearing by the municipalities is going to, in turn, go back to the ratepayers? [Representative Troy Hendrick]: Yeah. I think that's an incredibly valid question. Right? I I personally, philosophically, avoid that argument when it I I don't think that has to happen. Right? I think right. How are we gonna socialize this? That's the question. The bill proposes that the municipality should should absorb it and not throw it back on the rate payer. I'm I'm sure there's disagreement about whether or not that's [Witness Rob North]: Reality is it can be quite a substantial amount of money. Right. And I agree. You know that municipalities always struggle with their budget. Yep. And that can affect their ability to maintain. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: That can affect a bunch [Witness Rob North]: of different things within that municipality, and I I think that's a very, you know, high concern. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: Yeah. No argument. I do think the ACH question, the the automated bank to bank transfer, I think there are things you might wanna look at about whether or not that is that is feasible. Free free online payment systems that are possible by direct deposit as far as input. Yeah. So that's the one part in here that I think is the most compelling question that stays with me having done the brief amount of work I did on top. This is not a topic I I had never really looked at before, and it was fun to play with. Yeah. But I I think your question is absolutely valid. [Member Bram Kleppner]: Yeah. I would just point out that if you stop that source of revenue to tabs, they have two choices. One is to replace it with a new revenue source, which is raising other fees or raising the taxes, and the other is to cut something out of the municipal budget that is covered. So I think represent Southwest Point as well takes and will be in effect one way or the other. If they choose to raise taxes, it does end up on they choose to raise property taxes, it ends up back on everybody who owns or who is renting Right. One way one way. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: And I would say the counterpoint to be made about that impact is that it would be felt from an equity standpoint by folks who can least afford even a six dollar convenience here at the end. [Member Bram Kleppner]: And do you have any sense for the cost to a municipality of processing versus the fees they're charging? [Representative Troy Hendrick]: I didn't do any JFO work with this. Yeah. Yeah. I that's a a reasonable question. Certainly. [Chair Kathleen James]: Brent Howard? [Witness Thomas Weiss]: So if I pay my property tax bill with a [Representative Troy Hendrick]: These are utilities, just so if you Well, [Witness Thomas Weiss]: it doesn't matter. The point being that my town puts a three percent fee on using a credit card. Yep. And I imagine the utility portion would utilities would be subject to about that amount to pay the processor. Yep. And it's three percent whether it's once a month or anything. Right. And and many people are well, using their credit cards for their own convenience. And I don't feel that the other utility people should pay any additional costs because they're going to escalate the cost to run the municipal service. And you're and and you're taking this out to any municipality, so it means that even if the town doesn't run an electric company, it's on their their municipal water service or all those those bills. And [Representative Troy Hendrick]: many [Witness Thomas Weiss]: if somebody who can least afford to borrow on credit is borrowing with their convenience fee on a credit card. I'm assuming this is all documented. The convenience fee is for using some other means other than a check or cash. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: Online. Yeah. Or It's a [Witness Thomas Weiss]: an online service. And so we're we're putting their utility payment into their most expensive source of credit and compounding the person who can least afford it is imposing cost to themselves by borrowing money from an expensive source. [Witness Rob North]: Right? Okay. If she has variation. [Chair Kathleen James]: Yep. One more. Yeah. [Vice Chair R. Scott Campbell]: And maybe you've already answered this. Have you found out what kind of costs these are to the utilities? There were the utility that was charging your your your constituent? [Representative Troy Hendrick]: I have not done any JFO request on this. So I don't have an answer for that. [Vice Chair R. Scott Campbell]: I, you know So we don't know whether it's one person or twenty people. We're We [Representative Troy Hendrick]: don't know that, and we don't know if it's a three dollar convenience fee or a six dollar convenience fee. Right. Yep. [Witness Rob North]: Okay. Thank you. [Chair Kathleen James]: Especially with that oh, Victoria? I was just gonna say, especially with a short form bill or a bill that's submitted by request, we typically don't ask our legislative council or joint fiscal office to invest much time in analysis until it you know, if a committee is gonna even take it up. Victoria? [Speaker 7 ]: No. I I appreciate this. A lot of my towns don't have utilities, but property taxes are an issue. I'm just wondering because towns use local banks, if maybe the bank would play a different role in these payments and be able to be more [Representative Troy Hendrick]: That's the ACH question. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really valid possible solution here that wouldn't be a financial impact. Mhmm. Yep. [Chair Kathleen James]: Okay. Thank you so much for coming in. Representative Hedrick, we we appreciate your time. Sorry we were running a little bit late. [Witness Rob North]: You're good. [Representative Troy Hendrick]: I think you're back on track. [Chair Kathleen James]: Yeah? Alright. [Witness Rob North]: Thank you. [Chair Kathleen James]: Thanks, Troy. Thanks.

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SmartTranscript of House Energy and Digital Infrastructure 2025-02-28 10:15am

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