NY Times Slams Obama Truck Agency Nominee

The New York Times joined labor and highway safety interests opposed to the nomination of state trucking association leader Anne S. Ferro to be the next Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administrator, publishing an editorial today calling her record “disqualifying” and her nomination by President Obama “a peculiar choice.”

“It was wrong, as several committee members noted at the time, for the Bush White House to install people from the trucking industry to regulate their own industry,” the newspaper said in its editorial. “It is no less wrong for Mr. Obama to do it.”

Since 2003, Ferro has been president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association, representing trucking companies in the state capitol of Annapolis.

For 11 years prior to that, she was a regulator the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration, where she worked with John Pocari, then Maryland’s secretary of transportation under Gov. Paris Glendening and now deputy secretary in the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The newspaper took its stance as Ferro prepares for a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on her nomination this afternoon.

When Obama tapped Ferro for the FMCSA post in June he raised an outcry from the Teamsters union and several public safety groups opposed to changes in the hours of service rules for truck drivers that Ferro, as head of MMTA, supported.

The hours-of-service issue has bedeviled the FMCSA since the agency was formed in 2000. Congress ordered the Department of Transportation to rewrite 1930s-era HOS rules in 1995, and the FMCSA inherited the task. It has made four attempts, and been challenged in court successfully twice. If the Senate approves Ferro’s nomination, a renewed courtroom battle to overturn the driver rules may be her first challenge.

Introduced in 2003, the regulation shortened the driver workday from 15 hours — which was often extended to 17 hours by breaks — to a maximum 14 hours. That includes 11 consecutive hours of driving time, one hour more than the older limit. For drivers on the road, the remaining 10 hours of mandatory rest time includes a requirement for eight consecutive hours in the sleeper berth.

The FMCSA’s latest version of the rule, identical to two previous versions, was issued on Nov. 13, just weeks before President Obama took office, and took effect Jan.19.