Fingerprint Checks Put Off Until January
img src="/sites/default/files/images/articles/printeditiontag_new.gif" width=120 align=right>The Bush administration told Congress it did not expect to begin fingerprint checks of hazardous materials drivers until January 2005, well past its last official notice that states should begin such checks as early as this spring.
Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security Administration undersecretary for border and transportation security, told a House Appropriations subcommittee that DHS would implement those driver background checks in two phases.
“First would be the most critical name-based checks against our terrorist watch list and other databases that we have, that we will complete this year. And then starting in January of ’05, do a complete criminal history check,” Hutchinson said in March 11 testimony.
Last May, the Transportation Security Administration issued a regulation to, first, run hazmat drivers names against a national crime database, then for states by November 2003 to begin fingerprinting new and renewing applicants for hazmat endorsements to commercial driver licenses.
The agency delayed that rule last fall and gave states an option to either have an infrastructure set up by April 1, 2004, or apply for a waiver until Dec. 1, 2004.
Despite this, some industry and government officials had said they thought the administration would delay the rule still further (3-8, p. 3).
Rep. Martin Sabo (D-Minn.) questioned Hutchinson about the situation during a hearing on the proposed 2005 DHS budget, according to a transcript.
“I’m just curious about what the priority of this is and why it keeps being delayed and delayed,” Sabo said. “Clearly the question of who’s driving hazardous material in this country is very, very important.”
Hutchinson said the issue of criminal history checks for hazmat drivers was “a concern that needs to be addressed.” But he said that “it’s also a huge task to get the background checks accomplished.”
He said the government’s current plan was “to commence name-based checks of those 3.5 million [current] hazmat truck drivers by the end of this summer. And we hope to have that completed in four months.”
After that, Hutchinson said, the government hoped “to then do the complete criminal history checks beginning in January of ’05.”
Sabo asked him to clarify what he meant by saying the government would “begin” the second phase next January.
Hutchinson said TSA would have “the complicating factors of the rules and the fees and the division of responsibilities and the requirements to have an appeal process . . . in place, and we’d actually start receiving names for processing.”
This article appears in the March 22 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
