FMCSA Sends New HOS Proposal to White House for Review
This story appears in the Aug. 2 print edition of Transport Topics.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said it sent its hours-of-service proposal to the White House for review on July 26.
In a status report filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the agency said that “consistent with its obligations under the settlement agreement, FMCSA sent to [the White House Office of Management and Bud-get] a notice of proposed rulemaking governing the hours of service of drivers.”
In a separate legal proceeding, American Trucking Associations re-launched its lawsuit against FMCSA in an attempt to force the agency to issue a rule spelling out what evidence fleets need to retain in order to verify their drivers’ logbooks.
FMCSA’s HOS proposal was filed nine months after it reached a deal with Public Citizen, the Teamsters union and other groups to resolve their long-running dispute over the rules. Under the terms of the settlement, FMCSA has until July 2011 to publish a new final hours rule.
A spokeswoman for the agency said FMCSA would have no further comment at this time.
Before filing the rule, FMCSA placed nearly four dozen studies relating to health and wellness — mostly focusing on sleep and obesity — into the rulemaking docket.
“It is hard to discern the possible relationship between these studies and hours of service given that most them don’t seem to have a link to hours of service or even fatigue,” said David Osiecki, American Trucking Associations senior vice president of policy and regulatory affairs.
“Health is an important factor here, but the health has to be related to the rules and the working conditions,” Osiecki said.
When the rule was first overturned by a federal court in 2004, the court cited FMCSA’s lack of attention to driver health as one of the main reasons.
Stephen Keppler, interim executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said that he thought part of the reason for all the health studies was to respond to recommendations that the agency “look at sleep in its clinical sense,” but also that it was “part and parcel” related to the 2004 court ruling.
In a separate legal proceeding, ATA filed a notice with the D.C. circuit court saying it wanted to resume its suit against FMCSA over the agency’s failure to issue a rule listing what supporting documents fleets need to retain to verify their drivers’ logs.
“This isn’t litigation for litigation’s sake,” Osiecki said. “Those rules have changed over and over again over the years, not by rule but by policy memo, enforcement memo, guidance, interpretation and so forth, and that’s not the way to do business.”
ATA and FMCSA had agreed to put the suit on hold earlier this year, but after the agency issued new guidance, ATA told the court in a July 22 filing it wanted to resume proceedings.
In its filing, ATA said FMCSA has “not been willing to agree to a date-certain for issuance of the regulations.”
“ATA does not know whether [FMCSA] intended the regulatory guidance to be a solution — interim or otherwise . . . [but] what is clear is that the regulatory guidance fails to remedy the violation of the secretary’s statutory duty,” the brief said.
The trucking group also attacks FMCSA for promising a proposed rule in December, with a final rule to come out in the next two years, saying that time frame “is simply too long a period” for a rule that should have been issued in 1996.
FMCSA spokeswoman Candice Tolliver declined to comment on the suit. However, in a filing with the court, the agency said that it did not agree with ATA’s arguments, but it did not oppose a resetting of the case.
