Top FMCSA Lawyer Darling Named Acting Administrator

This story appears in the Sept. 1 print edition of Transport Topics.

Scott Darling, the new acting head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, was a largely unexpected choice to run the agency, trucking industry leaders said last week.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx named Darling as acting administrator Aug. 22 to succeed Anne Ferro. She left the agency to become president of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

Darling has been FMCSA’s chief legal counsel since 2012, when President Obama appointed him. That legal insight could be put to the test, considering the rulemakings FMCSA has under way.

“We congratulate Mr. Darling and look forward to working with him and his team going forward,” said American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves.

Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association officials also said they look forward to working with Darling and “providing highly relevant input on the realities and challenges of highway safety.”

Nobody saw the Darling choice coming, said Robert Moseley, a Greensboro, North Carolina, attorney who represents trucking clients and has dealt with FMCSA’s legal staff.

“I don’t know him at all,” said Moseley. “It’s interesting that they picked the lawyer.”

His selection dashed some expectations that the agency would tap William Bronrott, the deputy administrator.

FMCSA spokeswoman Marissa Padilla said Darling was not available for interviews.

Obama has not said whether Darling will be nominated for permanent FMCSA administrator, which would require Senate confirmation.

Darling may be a surprise pick to trucking but he is not new to the transportation sector.

Before becoming FMCSA’s chief legal counsel, Darling served as deputy chief of staff and assistant general counsel to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

While he doesn’t come with a trucking background — like Ferro, who was president of the Maryland Motor Truck Association before Obama named her to the FMCSA job in 2009 — nor the law enforcement background that other FMCSA administrators had, Darling is recognized as well-informed about the industry.

He’s “a smart guy, and he’s been working with the agency for a couple of years, so he knows the players and he knows the programs and the issues,” said Dave Osiecki, ATA’s chief of national advocacy.

“I think it’s a matter of sort of getting up to speed on the relationship side and starting to develop those,” Osiecki said, describing Darling as “a quiet guy.”

Osiecki said Darling “is a guy that listens well, that seemingly wants to do a good job, wants to do the right thing.”

Like others, Robert Voltmann, president of the Transportation Intermediaries Association, which represents freight brokers, said he didn’t know Darling.

“We’ve met with many members of the general counsel’s staff and have found them to be competent, so, we’re sure that his leadership will be good,” Voltmann said.

He also said he hopes Darling “maintains administrator Ferro’s openness to listening and that that openness translates into a good working relationship with industry as we try to find the right balance between industry needs, economic needs and safety needs.”

Under Ferro, FMCSA produced a mountain of regulations and rulemakings, many at the behest of Congress, which, for instance, mandated trucks to have electronic logging devices.

Much of that rulemaking and its fallout are still sitting on FMCSA’s plate, meaning Darling inherits the load, which includes the ongoing debate over the year-old driver hours-of-service rule change.

Congress is considering voting on a bill hotly debated in the Senate in June that would suspend the 34-hour restart provision in the HOS rule, pending further study on the restart’s effect on safety and productivity.

And FMCSA said in its August significant rulemaking report that it would publish its proposed rule on insurance minimums for carriers by the end of September.

The agency also said it would publish its proposed speed-limiter rule for trucks in December.

Additionally, the agency is expected to begin working on a rule that addresses treatment for sleep apnea, a disorder not uncommon in truck drivers that affects how well they sleep. Safety advocates have argued apnea must be treated to keep fatigued drivers off the road.

After Ferro announced in early August that she was leaving, there was speculation Bronrott would get the post.

“A lot of people in the industry . . . thought he would at least have it offered to him,” David Owen, president of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies, said of Bronrott.

Instead, the same day Ferro told her staff that Darling was Foxx’s choice, the announcement came that Bronrott would be leaving the agency at the end of the year.

Attorney Henry Seaton, who acts as general counsel to NASTC, said: “It’s probably good that Darling is a lawyer because, with all the stuff the agency’s stirring up, they’re going to need a good lawyer.”