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Senators berate FMCSA, offer it more money
By Jill Dunn
The Senate Appropriations Committee delivered a scathing report on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in its recommendations for 2009 funding – then recommended increasing the agency’s budget by $11 million.
The committee issued a July 14 report on two Cabinet departments -- Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development -- in making next year’s budget recommendations. That same day, the funding bill was placed on the Senate legislative calendar.
“The FMCSA has shown a pattern of undermining its safety mission by proposing weak regulations and failing to provide adequate oversight and enforcement of existing regulations,” the committee stated.
Still, the committee recommended $541 million for next year’s FMCSA funding, $11.3 million more than that enacted last year and equal to the Bush administration’s budget request.
The committee observed that the agency had been criticized not only by senators but by the DOT Office of Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office, the National Transportation Safety Board and the courts.
“The rules that FMCSA has proposed fail to achieve maximum safety benefits, and in some instances may undermine safety,” the committee stated. Lawsuits have forced the agency to revise hours-of-service rules, and a new hours rule has to be issued, it noted.
The report noted the inspector general had questioned FMCSA's effectiveness in achieving industry compliance. Eleven of the inspector general’s recommendations for the agency are incomplete, and although the agency is working on a new commercial driver’s license rule, its slow progress is troubling, the report said.
Raising a point that was the focus of a U.S. House hearing July 24, the report said the agency lacks a comprehensive system to oversee the health of commercial drivers. The FMCSA recently issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on this, which did not satisfy the National Transportation Safety Board; as a result, the recommendation remains classified as “open--unacceptable” by the NTSB.
In 2007, the same Senate committee included information on inspection results and out-of-service rates as a means of evaluating FMCSA's effectiveness in industry compliance.
“While marginal gains were made in 2007 compared to 2006, the charts show that over two-thirds of inspections continue to uncover violations, and one in five trucks or drivers inspected have violations so severe that they are immediately placed out of service,” the report stated. “FMCSA has a great deal of work to do to compel industry compliance.”
The committee recommended the agency continue pursuing the GAO’s recommendation of creating a national database of drug and alcohol test results, including positive results and refusals to be tested, and detail its progress to Congress by April 1, 2009. Such a database also is recommended by the American Trucking Associations. |
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