FMCSA Official Says Agency on Track to Finalize, Propose Many Key Rules

This story appears in the June 22 print edition of Transport Topics.

Federal regulators have a busy rulemaking schedule for the remainder of 2015 and into next year as they attempt to complete several significant proposed and final mandates.

By the fall, the agency plans to issue a final electronic logging device rule and proposed rules for entry-level driver training, motor carrier safety fitness determinations and prohibiting carriers from coercing drivers to violate federal regulations, an official said June 15 during a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration safety advisory committee briefing.

Robert Miller, FMCSA’s director for policy, strategic planning and regulations, told the committee the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also is planning to release a speed-limiter proposal for heavy trucks.

Then in early 2016, FMCSA plans to issue its final rule for a drug and alcohol clearinghouse and a proposed rule to make it easier for military truck drivers to obtain commercial driver licenses after leaving the service, Miller said.

Last week, FMCSA issued a proposed rule that would re­quire all U.S. carriers engaged in interstate commerce to use only commercial vehicles that display a certification label indicating the vehicles satisfy federal motor vehicle safety standards.

The proposal is in-tended to address the National Transportation Safety Board’s concerns about the operation of commercial vehicles that do not display certification labels, FMCSA said.

During last week’s advisory committee meeting, John Lannen, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, asked Miller why the agency so often fails to meet its projected deadlines to issue proposed or final rules.

Miller said that sometimes politics slows down the process, and at other times, the direction the agency takes on a rule can change in midstream.

“The other thing that plays into it is the volume of rules,” Miller said. “If you look at MAP-21, we had 39 rulemakings that Congress asked us to do in a two-year period.”

Larry Minor, FMCSA’s associate administrator, added that, as agency personnel delve into the process of researching any specific rulemaking, they often discover they “never really know what they don’t know.”

Another of the more common factors that can slow down a rule is the difficult nature of quantifying how the rule will improve safety, a requirement that is strictly enforced when the White House Office of Management and Budget reviews a potential rule, Minor said.

While agency officials said the rulemaking process is moving forward, the Obama administration has yet to announce its choice for a new administrator.

For the past three months, Scott Darling, FMCSA’s general counsel and formerly its acting administrator, has run the agency but without the title of acting administrator.

FMCSA officials and the administration continue to decline comment on the status of front-office personnel.

As head of FMCSA, Darling has not sought the public spotlight as often as his predecessor, Anne Ferro. Darling was appointed acting administrator in August, when Ferro left the agency after five years at the helm.

Staff Reporter Eugene Mulero contributed to this story.