Colorado has a transportation plan on the table to spend $68 million on mass transit, greener fuels and a network of charging stations for electric vehicles. The only public hearing on the proposal is Monday afternoon in Denver.

The money has to go for clear-air programs related to vehicle exhaust, according to the $14.7 billion settlement Volkswagen cut with prosecutors after the German automaker was caught using software to trick vehicle emissions tests for its diesel-powered vehicles.

The scandal involved about 550,000 diesel vehicles from 2009 through 2016, including about 9,700 of those vehicles in Colorado.

Colorado Politics told you last month that a draft of the plan to be heard Monday would put $18 million into transit buses, another $18 million in trucks and buses that run on alternative fuels, $10 million for electric vehicle charging stations plus administration and other clean-air initiatives.

Environmentalists are pushing heavily for that plan.

The hearing starts at 2 p.m. in the second-floor auditorium at the Colorado Department of Transportation headquarters at 4201 E. Arkansas Ave. in Denver.

Among those expected to testify will be Will Toor, the former Boulder mayor and Boulder County Commissioner, who is the director of the transportation program for the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, as well as Danny Katz, the director of the consumer advocacy group CoPIRG.

Toor and Katz co-authored an analysis of the VW settlement from Colorado’s vantage last year.

“Volkswagen’s emissions cheating vehicles emitted pollutants by as much as 40 times the legal limit,” they wrote last October. “Coloradans who thought they were driving cleaner cars were actually pouring huge amounts of pollution into our air every time they drove. It is critical that Colorado invest 100% of the Environmental Remediation Funds in the cleanest options available. In addition, Colorado has an opportunity to invest these dollars in a way that can accelerate the electrification of our transportation system.

“Because Colorado’s major utilities have been closing their most polluting older power plants and rapidly adding wind and solar, the state’s electricity mix is getting cleaner and cleaner. By moving our vehicles over to electricity as a fuel, Colorado can drastically reduce emissions from our transportation sector, which makes electrification of our transportation system one of the best ways to reduce air pollution from vehicles.”

Though the hearing, scheduled for three hours, is the only public meeting on the plan, the state will continue to accept public comments until Oct. 13.