In The News

HOS expected to clear White House on Friday

If all goes as planned, the proposed hours-of-service rule is expected to clear the White House Office of Management and Budget Friday, Nov. 26.

The release of the regulation from the White House will not include any details about what is included in the proposal. The proposal will only be made public once it is officially submitted to the Federal Register to be published. That is not expected to happen for another week or so.

Initially, the plan was for the proposal to clear the White House on Oct. 26 and publish in the Federal Register on Nov. 4. However, that changed when the review was extended at the White House.

According to a report on rulemakings from FMCSA, the new plan is for the proposed hours of service to clear OMB on Friday, Nov. 26, and publish in the Federal Register on Dec. 4. That is a Saturday and the Federal Register does not publish on Saturdays, so the proposal will probably publish around that weekend, if all goes as planned. The agency is planning on only a 60-day comment period for the proposal.

FMCSA submitted the notice of proposed rulemaking to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on July 26.

Typically, that would have been the first opportunity for the public to get any sort of hint as to what the agency is doing with the HOS regs. However, the abstract of the proposal provided by FMCSA does not offer any insight as to what the agency is proposing for HOS. Instead, the abstract outlines FMCSA’s obligation to revisit the rule because of a settlement agreement and the way the agency is approaching the HOS revision.

The OMB deadline was part of a settlement agreement between FMCSA and Public Citizen, which was signed on Oct. 26, 2009.

Once OMB signs off on the regulation, it will then be published in the Federal Register . That will be the first time that the public will get full disclosure of the agency’s plans on what – if any – changes will be made to the current HOS regulations.

The settlement agreement allowed for FMCSA and Public Citizen to file a joint motion 30 days after the NPRM is published in the Federal Register to determine what path the lawsuit will follow.

The settlement also contained a provision that FMCSA agreed to publish a final rulemaking on HOS within 21 months of signing. That means the final rule would be published in July 2011.

www.LandLineMag.com