Transportation Secretary and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg was questioned by House lawmakers in a hearing over his budget proposal for the next fiscal year.

Many topics were discussed from investments in rebuilding roads and bridges to his feelings on the regulation of the railroad industry. But, during the hearing, Buttigieg was able to get reacquainted with the member of Congress who represents the city he used to lead.

Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-IN-2nd) sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and wanted some answers from Buttigieg over his execution of plans for electric vehicle charging stations yet to be rolled out throughout the country.

These charging stations are part of two new government programs to increase public access to EV charging. They are the NEVI program, which is worth roughly $5 billion, and CFI, which is worth $2.5 billion. Yakym asked Buttigieg to justify those expensive price tags given the fact that after a couple of years, not many charging stations have been brought online.

“After two and a half years, it appears just the ninth NEVI charging station was brought online in Pennsylvania,” Yakym said. He added that other experts he spoke to on the program expected “hundreds of thousands” to be brought online this year. Buttigieg partially agreed with that assessment.

“The bulk of the NEVI chargers will be installed in 2027 and 2028, but I’m impressed to see that the first few hundred will come online this year,” Buttigieg said.

This evolved into a conversation on what Yakym said were “delays” with the two programs saying that they have “fallen flat on their face at the start.” Yakym pressed Buttigieg as to why it’s taken so long to get CFI charging stations online with zero so far having been installed. CFI was announced two years ago, but the Biden Administration awarded the first round of grants for those stations to be built in January of this year.

“It’s not typical, especially on a brand new program, to do (grants) on a five-month timeframe,” Buttigieg explained. “I’m impatient to do them, but I want to make sure nobody moves the goalposts here.”

Buttigieg said Yakym was incorrect to say the programs have been “delayed” given that they are designed to be executed by the second half of the decade.

Finally, Yakym asked how many of the current 183,000 NEVI charging ports were built by the federal government, to which Buttigieg responded saying those were built by the private sector. That prompted one final question from Yakym.

“Do you believe there is still an appropriate role for the federal government to play here, given the fact the private sector is doing so well in building these charging ports,” Yakym asked. “Shouldn’t the government just pull back and get out of the business?

“No, we think it’s important to fill in some of the gaps that won’t be penciled in by the private sector,” Buttigieg responded.

The goal of the programs is to have at least 500,000 public EV charging stations available across the U.S. by the end of the decade.