Opinion: Don't Blame the OMC Field Staff

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The following responds to “Back to Basics in Safety Enforcement” (3-8, p. 7), in which James E. Scapellato, former director of the Office of Motor Carriers Standards and Research, called for reforms in enforcing federal trucking safety regulations.

I know Mr. Scapellato [former director of the Office of Motor Carriers Research and Standards] fairly well, having first met him during a temporary assignment in the Georgia regional office of the Federal Highway Administration when I was serving as special assistant to the deputy director for field operations — a long title for a generalist. I also knew “Scap” in headquarters.

I went to headquarters in Washington from the field. I was one of those [OMC investigators] whom Mr. Scapellato refers to as “under-trained, inexperienced or plain unmotivated.”



All too often — in fact, most of the time — people who worked in headquarters took shots at the field investigators, who, by the way, are not called investigators in their professional titles — they are called “safety specialists.” That fact is almost always overlooked, conveniently, when someone is driving home an issue about poor investigative skills. These specialists were never hired to be “investigators.” The job description was clearly stated, and probably remains so to this day.

Office of Motor Carrier safety specialists do a job dictated by the constantly changing whims of various headquarters staffers. When a new office director comes in, if he or she can’t quite get a complete grasp of ongoing programs, the result is a change of the programs.

OMC field staffers get motivated to do something really useful and worthwhile, and then someone new moves into a “position of authority” within the headquarters set-up, and the changes flow faster than water from a freshly breached dam.

Lack of motivation? No, not the OMC field staff. But no one stays highly motivated when their only constant is change that occurs without noticeable logic. And that has been the hallmark of OMC for the past several years.

Scap’s article has valid points, but one must remember, this was a man in a “position of authority” at one point. He had numerous opportunities to lessen the confusion of the field staff’s tasks. Now he would have you believe, as a consultant to the industry he once helped regulate, that he desires change.

It is a shame that today’s field staffers can’t speak out to defend themselves, but in today’s federal set-up, to do so is to jeopardize one’s career.

I won’t speak much to Scap’s point about cases [going] before the courts — except to say that those cases were also “reviewed” several times by the specialist’s supervisors, yet [Mr. Scapellato] only identifies the specialist for fault.

It is the “cookie cutter” mentality and the old “punish the entire class for the guilt of one” idea. It is not entirely about competency and training issues.

When Dick Landis ran the agency [1985-1993], there was a goal and a purpose that the field staff was always able to relate to. This continued on during John Eicher’s temporary tenure.

The change came when George Reagle became the associate administrator [in 1994]. The field staff lost all sense of purpose and direction. Motivation and loyalty were replaced by a sense of betrayal and fear for a job.

It was made clear that under Mr. Reagle’s tenure, OMC field staff would be looked upon as expendable extensions of headquarters. Training took a nose dive as things in headquarters became a tug of war to win the “favors” of this new boss, whose only demand for loyalty was to him. Cross this new AA, and his alter ego would surface and send you off into some area of space that not even Captain Kirk would take the Starship Enterprise. The dedicated and hard-working people in headquarters were outgunned and overwhelmed. To challenge was to risk a career.

Concurrent with the mayhem in Washington, the field staff was bombarded from all angles and offices with new theories as to how things should work.

This is the legacy of this AA. OMC’s previous leaders sought what was best for the agency and what was best for the field staff. That all terminated shortly after the arrival of Mr. Reagle.

hat occurred along the way was a mass exodus of all those who could leave — myself included. A job that I was once proud and excited to perform suddenly became something of lesser value because the new boss thought that way.

Even when the field staff started to make inroads into the ideas of discipline for the “bad” type of carrier, what became apparent was that some of the bosses in headquarters were reluctant to “make waves” against the industry we were supposed to be regulating.

Mr. Archer worked for the Office of Motor Carriers from 1986 until his early retirement in 1997. Among his assignments were safety specialist in Ohio (1986-88), state safety grant programs manager for the San Francisco regional office (1991-94) and federal programs manager (1994-97).

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