NCLA submits opposition to mandatory vehicle travel rule

The lobbying agency for the chambers of commerce in Northern Colorado, along with the Business Alliance for Economic Regulatory Sensibility, is preparing to testify against an effort to force employers to reduce greenhouse gases by reducing the vehicle trips that their employees take getting to work.

Specifically, the Northern Colorado Legislative Alliance and the business alliance oppose numerical targets in the so-called Employer Trip Reduction Program (ETRP), which affects businesses with more than 100 employees. The two groups plan to testify at the hearing on the proposal Aug. 18. A written statement was submitted to the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission July 9.

Among the arguments that the two groups make is that the trip-reduction program is too aggressive and is based on baseline numbers that are not accurate. They contend that the program would require reductions far greater than any achieved in similar programs.

The NCLA, which lobbies on behalf of the chambers of commerce in Fort Collins, Greeley and Loveland, said that about 2,600 companies across the Denver area and the North Front Range, including 350 in Larimer and Weld County, would be required to comply with the pending rules by April 2022. If approved, the program would require companies with more than 100 employees at a single worksite to:

• Develop and implement a company-funded plan to reduce their employees’ single-occupancy-vehicle trips commuting to and from the worksite.  
• Achieve a 75% single-occupancy-vehicle drive rate goal by July 2023 and 60% by 2025.
• Identify or hire a transportation coordinator.
• Develop a baseline of the current single-occupancy-vehicle rates that will include commuting practices, vehicle type and other data.
• Report periodically on progress toward achievement of the goal.

The commission has determined that the program will cost each employer between $7,200 and $811,643, the NCLA said.

“The commission substantially overstates the program’s emission reductions in its economic impact analysis and fails to account for several costs that employers will incur,” the NCLA argued in its statement.  “The proposed ETRP rule, consequently, costs far more per ton of emissions reduced than other commission regulations.” 

The business groups would like the commission to remove specific single-occupancy-vehicle drive targets and instead focus on incentive-based programs instead of mandates.

“The recent passage of Senate Bill 21-260 coupled with employers that are already expanding remote work opportunities in response to the market need will have a greater impact upon reducing GHG emissions than the harmful and overreaching provisions of the mandatory ETRP proposal,” Ann Hutchison, president & CEO of the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce, said in a written statement.

“A mandatory ETRP will have adverse effects on disproportionately impacted communities, many of which are in Weld and Larimer counties,” said Sandra Hagen Solin, head of the NCLA.  “Combine that with the compounding burden of ETRP on female employees emerging from the She-Cession, the unique harm of the pandemic to women, and it begs the question why the state would propose such a program.” 

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