Editorial: Good News, Not So Good News
As TT has been reporting for weeks, there are lots of questions concerning EPA’s handling of the matter, such as when it first learned of problems related to its emissions testing of the engines, and why it took the agency so long to act.
The engine makers insist they warned EPA as early as 1994 that the emissions tests didn’t represent real-life use, and that they could pass the tests by fooling with their electronic controls. EPA, they say, did nothing about it, at least not until last year.
Correspondence obtained by TT shows that Rep. Tom Bliley (R-Va.) has been paying attention to EPA’s actions since at least early 1998. He backed off after EPA told him it was negotiating a settlement with the engine makers. Now that the agency has hit the manufacturers with a $1 billion package of fines, retrofits and redesigns, Mr. Bliley has shown renewed interest in the case.
Meanwhile, raspberries for Rep. Frank Wolf, also a Republican from Virginia.
Mr. Wolf, who has been carrying on a one-man crusade to move the Office of Motor Carriers from the Federal Highway Administration to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, again vowed to make it happen.
He has decided a new home for OMC will make our nation’s highways safer, that NHTSA will be able to corral the big, bad trucking industry in a way that FHWA never has. He still hasn’t presented evidence to support his theory, but he vowed to get Congress to agree with him — despite the actions of his self-declared arch-enemies: the trucking industry, American Trucking Associations and, as of now, Transport Topics.
He told one of our reporters that he isn’t going to talk to TT anymore. He doesn’t need us, he said, because when he wants publicity, he can get the Washington Post and the television networks to give it to him.
Rest assured, dear readers, that we’ll continue to do our jobs even without Mr. Wolf’s help.
