States Can Collect UCR Fees at 2009 Levels, FMCSA Says

This story appears in the March 8 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration said last week that even though it hasn’t set 2010 fees for the Unified Carrier Registration, states may begin collecting some revenue from carriers using last year’s fee levels.

However, FMCSA also suggested that might mean states would have to go back to carriers a second time if the eventual fees are higher.

FMCSA is examining proposals for the 2010 UCR fees, which could include massive increases. Fees for the program, which are collected from all interstate carriers, as well as brokers and forwarders, depending on fleet size, are set annually by FMCSA with the recommendation of a board comprising state and industry executives.

In a March 2 Federal Register notice, FMCSA said the 2010 fees have not been finalized “due to unexpected delays.”

FMCSA is reviewing a proposal that would increase the fees 122% for fleets to compensate for revenues that were lower than anticipated over the past few years and a change in the law that altered how companies calculate the size of their fleets (click here for previous story).

“Until an adjustment in the fees is published by FMCSA, states participating in the UCR plan and agreement may assess and collect fees under the current FMCSA regulation,” the agency said.

FMCSA’s proposal was panned by enforcement and industry groups, which said the board that oversees the program should address FMCSA’s ruling before any fees are collected.

FMCSA spokeswoman Candice Tolliver said in a statement that the guidance “supports our state partners by enabling them to collect fees that help to fund critical motor carrier safety and enforcement programs.”

Typically, the funds collected by the UCR program are funneled into various commercial vehicle enforcement activities.

“FMCSA wants to ensure that states have the resources they need as the agency develops a new final rule for the Unified Carrier Registration plan and agreement,” Tolliver said.

Bob Pitcher, vice president of state laws for American Trucking Associations and vice chairman of the board that oversees the UCR program, told TT that the board members “certainly wish all the states would wait on this” until after the UCR board’s March 11 meeting.

Pitcher said agency officials previously had suggested using last year’s fees as a basis for 2010 collections, “and the board showed absolutely no interest in it.”

“We would have hoped as the board and as the industry that they would have coordinated with the board,” Pitcher said.

Stephen Keppler, interim executive director of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, said the enforcement group was advising its members to wait until the “UCR board makes a decision one way or the other so we have uniformity.”

Keppler said changes in how the level of the UCR fees are calculated would reduce the amount of money states even could collect.

The large increases in the proposed fees for 2010 are the result of a change in the law that removed trailers from how the fees are assessed. UCR, which replaced the Single-State Registration System after 2007, uses the number of vehicles a fleet operates, rather than a flat per-truck charge, to set a carrier’s annual fee.

“It doesn’t allow states to collect nearly the amount of revenue that was authorized in 2009 because of statutory changes removing trailers,” Keppler said. “So even if they were to collect the total allotment based upon that guidance, it’s 40% to 50% of the total revenue.”

The guidance does allow states to go back and collect the difference if the eventual 2010 are higher, but Keppler and Pitcher both said that would cause more problems than it solved.

Keppler said that trying to collect fees twice “becomes an additional administrative burden” and would be an enforcement challenge.

The double collection, Pitcher said, would be “extremely problematic, legally, and maybe almost impossible to do administratively.”

In addition, he said, there may be carriers that “will pay now and then say, ‘Well, that’s all we’ll pay.’ ”