Bush Offers Large Hike in FMCSA Budget
The funding boost is intended to help the agency get ready for Mexican trucks to operate throughout the United States and aims to further reduce the number of U.S. highway fatalities involving large trucks.
Some of the additional funds would go to shore up en-forcement programs for federal and state trucking rules, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said Monday as he unveiled details of Bush’s fiscal 2002 budget for the department.
The FMCSA operating budget targets $19 million for “increased oversight and enforcement activities, including stationing 80 additional federal enforcement personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border,” said a Department of Transporta-tion budget document.
If approved, the first budget plan of the George W. Bush administration would take effect for the government spending year that starts in October.
Mineta reiterated that he planned to allow Mexican trucks to operate across the entire United States by January 2002, compared with existing U.S. rules limiting them to a narrow commercial zone in border states. A panel under the North American Free Trade Agreement has ruled that those restrictions violate the NAFTA treaty.
But Mineta cautioned that “Mexican drivers will have to comply with our requirements,” and that “Mexican carriers also will have to submit proof” of compliance.
The proposal would also have FMCSA helping oversee $56 million to build truck inspection facilities at the border, projects that would be funded through the Federal High-way Administration.
The FHWA funds would go toward assuring the safety of Mexican trucks crossing into the Untied States and im-proving the flow of trucks at border crossings, Mineta said.
The administration proposes that FMCSA’s total budget for operations and research would jump by 51% in fiscal 2002, to $139 million from the $92 million already enacted for the current year.
The separate National Motor Carrier Safety Program within FMCSA would see its funding rise 16% to $205 million, from $177 enacted for fiscal 2001. Most of that, $163 mil-lion, would be spent by the Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program grant program to encourage state enforcement efforts.
Within the MCSAP funding, $18 million would be carved out “for enhanced state enforcement operations at the southern border,” the budget document said.
In all, the agency’s budget would rise 28% to “help meet the challenge of improving motor carrier safety,” the docu-ment noted.
It observed that preliminary figures show U.S. deaths from accidents involving large trucks declined to 5,307 in 2000 from 5,362 the year before, and that the goal is to further curb that number to 4,710 next year.
So the budget proposal includes funds for a range of pro-grams from crash data improvements to a 24-hour safety hotline, advanced truck safety technologies to a program that targets high-risk motor carriers.
The FMCSA budget is part of an overall $59.5 billion DOT proposal, up from $58.7 billion allocated for this year.
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