Lawmakers will 'idle' this week
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By Peter Hirschfeld Vermont Press Bureau - Published: January 25, 2010
MONTPELIER – An effort to reduce exhaust emissions from large trucks has morphed into an all-out ban on excessive idling by any vehicle.
A House energy committee this week is expected to approve a bill that would impose modest fines on motorists who their leave cars running in place for more than five minutes. While Administration officials have reserved judgment until they see the final language, the bill, which carves out numerous exceptions for the trucking industry, has met with almost no opposition from trade groups that would be most affected by the ban.
Rep. Tony Klein, the East Montpelier Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, calls the proposed legislation an environmental-protection bill that would tamp down unnecessary greenhouse-gas emissions.
"In addition to putting more emphasis on public transportation, we have to begin getting down to individual responsibility and realize that every one of us contribute – and a lot of it unnecessarily – to increasing our carbon footprint," Klein says.
The bill initially focused only on trucks heavier than 10,000 pounds. Testimony from special interests affected by the idling ban, however, compelled lawmakers to broaden the effort.
"If we have to do it, why doesn't everybody else have to play by the same rules?" asked Ed Larson, head of the Vermont Forest Products Association, a trade group whose membership includes truckers moving lumber.
"The committee thought, 'they're absolutely right'" Klein says. "If we write this in the correct manner, there no reason we shouldn't expand this to cars as well."
Larson says his organization won't fight the bill, provided it retains the numerous exemptions for cold-weather idling and other caveats that protect heavy vehicles – like fuel or utility trucks – that need the engine running to operate pumps, bucket loaders or other equipment.
Ed Miller, who represents the Vermont Truck and Bus Association, says many of his group's members – largely in the interest of energy savings – have already voluntarily instituted their own idling policies. The exemptions contained in the bill, he says, have allowed his group to offer its explicit support for the bill.
"It's a good bill," Miller says.
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which testified in support of the bill last week, says anti-idling policies instituted for its fleet show the potential benefits of the legislation. In a year-over-year comparison, the company says, the idling reduction saved the company 5,000 gallons of gasoline. Idling, the company said, dropped from 30 percent of engine-running time to less than 10 percent.
Johanna Miller, with the Vermont Natural Resources Council, says results like that, extrapolated statewide, could substantially cut down on greenhouse-gas emissions. The city of Burlington already has a municipal idling ban on its books.
"It's one small but very important step toward meeting state's anti-greenhouse-gas goals," Miller says. "Small steps about changing human behavior can take a bite out of that challenge and help us meet that goal."
Miller says the legislation – which would impose civil traffic citations on violators (exact fines have yet to be determined, though Klein says first offenses would fall in the range of $25) – will also bolster community-based efforts to change idling behavior. While local "energy committees" around the state have passed ordinances and resolutions dealing with excessive idling, she says, they aren't really enforceable. "This bill would kind of give those efforts some teeth," Miller says.
Klein says the bill is as much about education as it is about penalizing bad actors. The legislation, he says, would include a public-outreach campaign intended to inform motorists why they should follow the new law.
"This isn't an ominous bill – do the right thing or else," Klein says. "This is a do-the-right-thing-and-here's-why bill."
Klein concedes that enforcement could be problematic. Law-enforcement officers would have to not only spot idling vehicles, but sit and wait five minutes in order to prove the transgression. Still, he says simply having a law will change many people's behavior.
"Do we have a police officer watching every stop sign? No," Klein says. "But that doesn't mean people don't stop."
Even if the bill gets a vote on the floor of the House – it will pass through to the judiciary committee after leaving the energy committee – the legislation faces some roadblocks in the Senate. Senate President Peter Shumlin, who readily acknowledges a Libertarian streak, says he's loath to add new laws policing human behavior.
"I will consider any bill that makes sense, but with the understanding that you can't legislate common sense," Shumlin says. "I think you get more with honey than you do with vinegar. We need to educate Vermonters about the destructive nature of idling, not beat them around with new laws."
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