Creation and Convening of Task Force (2)
Description:
Creating a RUC task force comprising various stakeholders and legislators has generally proven to be one of the best ways to get statewide representation for the exploration of RUC. Note that a task force may also be referred to as a steering committee or working group.
Details:
The task force can be composed of legislators, mayors, a governor’s office representative, industry stakeholders, government agencies, and academics, with each member representing different stakeholder groups. The most effective number of participants has proven to be between 12 and 30 members. Convening relatively frequent meetings, every one to six months, keeps members engaged and policy momentum going. The task force can advise the lead RUC agency and make recommendations about a possible pilot, legislation, and operations to move RUC forward. The task force generally focuses on high-level policy recommendations; lower-level technical and operational decisions may be left to the lead RUC agency. If passenger and commercial vehicles are administered separately, separate task forces or subcommittees may be useful.
Primary Uses:
Provide key stakeholder perspectives to the research and formation of RUC policy. Serve as a knowledgeable committee that advises decision-makers or serves as decision-makers on RUC policy.
Best Practices/Lessons Learned:
- Including key legislators in the task force provides a critical connection to the legislature.
- Task forces have been established in different ways depending on the state. Some states have legislatively directed task forces specifically for RUC. In several states, task forces have been created to look at alternative revenue mechanisms more generally. In other states, without legislatively directed task forces, steering committees have been created to advise the lead RUC agency and serve as proxies for a broad stakeholder group.
- Having a knowledgeable but neutral chair of the task force can help the group stay focused, produce useful recommendations, and navigate disagreements.
- The ideal size of the task force is 12 to 20 members; more than 30 members is impracticable. If many stakeholders want to be on the task force, a second committee that reviews the recommendations of the main task force is recommended.
- In some cases, it may be helpful to have subcommittees work through especially complex issues and systems to provide a recommendation to the full committee.
- Start the task force process with one to three information sessions in which subject matter experts present the background on RUC.
- The task force both guides RUC decisions and supports factual dissemination of information on RUC, with task force members communicating with the stakeholder group that they represent. Depending on how the RUC is implemented, separate task forces may be necessary to facilitate decision-making for passenger vehicles separate from heavy-duty and medium-duty vehicles.
- The task force is most important during pre-legislative work.
- Legislation may or may not create the task force. If created by legislation, the task force will likely be given specific authority.
- A task force should be made up of members strategically selected for their knowledge and understanding of the transportation industry and transportation policy, their roles in the success of the regional economy, and their existing community relationships.
- Core stakeholders should be represented on a task force, especially those that are often marginalized and underrepresented in transportation policy decisions.
- Depending on the vehicle tax/fee administrative structure of the jurisdiction, consider separate steering committees or subcommittees for heavy-duty vehicles and passenger and medium-duty vehicles. Twenty-eight states currently have different administration departments for commercial vehicle registrations, fuel tax, and/or noncommercial registrations.
State Government Context and Assumptions:
The lead RUC agency or legislature oversees the task force.