In The News

HOS remains under review at Office of Management and Budget

The proposed hours-of-service regulations remain at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, but it should not affect the agency’s ability to have a final rule completed by mid-2011.

The plan was for the White House to finish review of the regulation on Friday, Nov. 26. However, that was just the plan, and it’s not uncommon for reviews to miss their targeted completion date. The continuing review does not mean the journey toward new HOS regs has been derailed.

FMCSA Spokeswoman Candice Tolliver told Land Line on Monday that the agency is prepared to meet the agreed upon deadline for a final rule.

The deadline for a new final rule on hours of service is part of a settlement agreement between FMCSA and Public Citizen, which was signed on Oct. 26, 2009.

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

The next step toward meeting that deadline is for the proposed reg to clear OMB and be published in the Federal Register.

The release of the proposed regulation from the White House will not include any details about possible changes to the regulation. The proposal will only be made public once it is officially submitted to the Federal Register to be published.

According to a report on rulemakings from FMCSA, the new plan was 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.

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