The Energy & Technology Committee
(E&T) on which I serve has three areas of responsibility over
Vermont's infrastructure: energy, telecommunications, and information
technology (IT). In the six weeks of this session, we've been pretty
active in each of these areas.
Energy
The House has already passed two of our
bills dealing with energy this session. H.410 extends Vermont's
appliance efficiency standards. A similar bill enacted last year
adopts the current federal appliance efficiency standards for Vermont
if the current federal Environmental Protection Agency decides to
rescind them. Those standards have saved consumers billions of
dollars in energy costs and offset millions of tons of CO2 emissions.
With H.410 Vermont will adopt additional standards for products like
commercial kitchen items, air compressors, computers and computer
monitors, and water appliances like faucets, showerheads and toilets.
These include standards developed by the U.S. Department of Energy,
those adopted by the Energy Star program and other industry standards
that manufacturers have already adopted.
The second bill, H.616, authorizes the
Burlington Electric Department to use the waste heat from the McNeil
biomass electric generation facility for a district heat project that
will pump hot water through highly efficient pipes to the UVM Medical
Center, the UVM campus and the new Burlington Center redevelopment
project. This project will not only increase the plant's efficiency
but will offset greenhouse gas emissions by replacing fossil fuels
used for heating.
E&T also voted to require that the
Agency of Natural Resources use the $18.7M from the Volkswagen
settlement solely for electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure
and for conversion from fossil fuel vehicles to EVs as allowed under
the terms of the settlement.
Telecommunications
Again, two of our bills dealing with
telecommunications were passed by the House. Both seek to get high
speed broadband out to rural areas where population density is too
low to justify private investment. H.581 specifies that Connectivity
Initiative grants funded by the Vermont Universal Service Fund (USF)
can only be used for new broadband infrastructure projects and not
for ongoing operational expenses. H.582 would increase the USF fee
from 2% today to 2.5% starting in 2018 and ending in 2022. While this
will increase the cost of a $100 phone bill by 50 cents per month, it
will raise $1.5M annually and will be allocated to the Connectivity
Initiative to expand broadband in rural areas.
Information Technology
Last year the Agency of Digital
Services (ADS) was created to consolidate the state government's IT
infrastructure and services which were distributed throughout the
agencies. Our committee has been reviewing the status of the
reorganization and the IT projects the agency now oversees as well as
the forward focus of the agency. To date, the reorganization is
proceeding well with development personnel working in the same
agencies and departments as before while reporting directly to ADS.
The highest priority of ADS now is cybersecurity. In the last 12
months more than 4 million cyber attacks on state systems were
detected. Plans are in place to partner with Norwich University to
identify weaknesses and strengthen monitoring and remediation.
E&T has also been investigating
steps the state can take to enforce net neutrality within our
borders. Net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) should enable access to all content and applications
regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular
products or websites. The recent decision by the Federal
Communications Commission to reverse Obama administration rules
ensuring net neutrality puts content providers in the position of
having to pay tolls to allow users to access their products thereby
disadvantaging smaller content providers. While the Governor recently
issued an executive order requiring state agencies and departments to
write net neutrality into contracts with ISPs, E&T will continue
investigating this subject in hopes of developing even stronger net
neutrality rules for consumer protection.
As always, I can be reached by phone
(802-233-5238) or by email (myantachka.dfa@gmail.com).
