DC Velocity - August 2015

newsworthy

A TENTATIVE SIX-YEAR DEAL HAS BEEN STRUCK to fund the nation’s surface transportation programs with provisions establishing a national multimodal freight policy and creating a dedicated funding stream for multimodal projects.

The bipartisan legislation, announced July 21, would also require motor carrier safety scores developed under the auspices of the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Compliance, Safety, Accountability program (CSA) to be withdrawn from public view for nearly two years. The academic group Transportation Research Board would have 18 months from the bill’s enactment to conduct a study of the CSA program, and the secretary of transportation would have up to four additional months to implement the research board’s recommendations. Trucking interests have said the scores should be withdrawn because they are built on faulty methodology and incomplete data. Safety advocates argue that hiding carrier safety scores from the public enables unsafe carriers to conceal operational problems and puts the traveling public at risk.

The bill, called the “Developing a Reliable and Innovative Vision for the Economy (DRIVE) Act,” was negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Committee. As DC VELOCITY went to press, the bill had yet to move to the Senate floor because Senate Democrats objected to the legislative text’s being released less than an hour before a scheduled floor vote, giving lawmakers no time to review it.

In addition, the House of Representatives has already
voted to extend the current law, which was set to expire
July 31, until the end of the year to give Congress time to
craft a long-term bill. As the summer legislative recess was
fast approaching, few expected the House to digest the
1,012-page Senate bill and hash out any differences during
the House-Senate conference process fast
enough to get a final bill approved by both
houses and reach President Obama’s desk
for signature. The most likely scenario is
that the Senate will vote to extend the cur-
rent law for the same amount of time as
did the House, and then both will return
from recess to negotiate from the frame-
work established under the McConnell-
Boxer deal.

The bill provides three years of guaranteed funding from the Highway Trust Fund, the mechanism used to disburse monies for transportation projects. About $45 billion will come from a hodge-podge of spending offsets and be supported by approximately $34 billion in annual motor fuels tax receipts that are used to support the trust fund. About $16 billion of the $45 billion in offsets will come from a reduction in the interest rate on dividends the Federal Reserve has paid to banks with more than $1 billion in consolidated assets. About $9 billion will be generated by the drawdown and sale of 101 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which accumulates huge oil stockpiles to be released in the event of a major emergency. Another $4

billion will come from indexing Customs user fees to the rate of inflation.

A NATIONAL STRATEGIC PLAN

The national multimodal freight policy, which would be overseen by the DOT’s undersecretary of policy, calls for the creation of a national freight network con- p. 18