Industry Supports Selection of Ferro to Lead FMCSA

This story appears in the June 15 print edition of Transport Topics.

Trucking industry groups closed ranks in support of Anne Ferro to head the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, after the Teamsters union and a handful of advocacy groups said they opposed her nomination.

The union, along with the Truck Safety Coalition and its affiliates Parents Against Tired Truckers and Citizens for Reliable and Safe Highways, wrote to President Obama on June 5, stating their opposition to Ferro and citing her ties to the trucking industry as the head of the Maryland Motor Truck Association.

“Ms. Ferro is an apologist for the failure of FMCSA to improve the safety record of commercial vehicles,” the groups said in their June 5 letter, specifically citing her support for the current hours-of-service rules.

Obama nominated Ferro, who headed the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration from 1997 to 2003, on June 4 (click here for previous story).

Ferro “has consistently worked against making common-sense improvements” said Bill Redding, spokesman for the Truck Safety Coalition. He noted that MMTA is affiliated with American Trucking Associations and said that “it doesn’t make sense to us to see someone who worked for ATA to be running the agency that should be regulating them.”

“We would obviously like to see a public safety person in that role,” Redding said.

“Ms. Ferro continues to publicly support the HOS rule, in concert with American Trucking Associations, as a safe and wise policy,” the groups’ letter said. “As recently as Jan. 10, 2009, Ms. Ferro co-wrote a letter defending the . . . rule in response to an editorial published in The Baltimore Sun criticizing the safety of the rule.”

Ferro’s Jan. 10 letter, also signed by Barbara Windsor, president of Hahn Transportation Inc., New Market, Md., said the Sun’s editorial failed to point out that the new rules reduced the amount of work time drivers can perform and increased mandatory rest time. The letter also said increases in truck-related fatalities were outpaced by the rise of overall highway deaths in 2005.

Windsor told TT she believed Ferro would be “a very fair and just administrator,” as she was when she ran the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration.

Responding to the criticisms of Ferro, Windsor said, “If they really knew Anne and realized she is truly a regulator and had been a regulator prior, before coming to Maryland Motor Truck, they would understand that she will move forward, and she has told us that she will move with knowledge of trucking, but she will move as a regulator.”

Not all advocacy groups immediately joined the opposition to Ferro. Public Citizen, which has sided with the Teamsters union and other advocacy groups in the past, did not sign the letter opposing Ferro’s nomination. Neither did Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. A spokeswoman for Advocates said the group does not comment on nominations.

Lena Pons, a policy analyst with Public Citizen, said the choice of Ferro was not surprising, but that “her position on the hours-of-service rule is troubling for us.”

“We have serious reservations with the hours-of-service rules and we’re pretty concerned with her connections to the trucking industry,” Pons said, “but we haven’t made a final decision about whether we would oppose her nomination at this time.”

Several industry groups said they supported Ferro’s nomination.

Steve Campbell, executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said, “I haven’t seen any real legitimate criticism,” beyond complaints about Ferro’s position on the HOS rule.

“It seemed to me that their concern was over her support of keeping the current hours-of-service regulations . . . and it is CVSA’s position to be in agreement that the current hours-of-service regulations are OK,” Campbell said.

Dale Bennett, executive vice president of the Virginia Trucking Association, hailed Ferro’s nomination as “an outstanding choice.”

“Based on her long career experience and successful advocacy for driver and highway safety, I don’t know if you can find anyone who has a background like she’s got and has a record of being a fair but tough advocate to do everything [that] makes sense to improve highway safety,” Bennett said.

Bennett also dismissed concerns about Ferro’s previous position with MMTA, saying she was an “effective administrator” of the state’s motor vehicle agency before joining the trucking group in 2003.

“I think Anne is a person of integrity that is going to do what she thinks is the right thing to do and what makes sense,” he told TT. “I don’t think a few years working with the trucking industry is going to change her approach at all.”

Linda Bauer Darr, president of the American Moving & Storage Association, also hailed Obama’s choice of Ferro.

“She has extensive experience on a variety of trucking issues, both from within government as well as representing the private trucking industry,” Darr said in a statement.