Editorial: A Rule That Pleases No One

June 7, 2000 10:30 AM, EDT

A year ago, Paul Brennan, then shepherding along revisions of the hours of service for the Department of Transportation as director of motor carrier standards, warned that when the carrier industry finally saw the proposal, it would erupt in a chorus of boos.

The proposal would “please no one,” he told members of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance in May 1999. He knew that the regulations, in having to account for such a wide variety of truck operations, would have little chance of covering all the bases adroitly.

He also knew that the fundamental change in the driver’s daily hours, at the heart of the new rules, would be very upsetting for the industry — for scores of reasons.

Brennan has since retired from government service, but his prediction has come true.

Since the April 25 unveiling of the DOT proposal, reaction inside and outside of trucking has been nearly universally negative. There are some exceptions, but they are drowned out by the drumbeat of “Hell, no, we won’t go.”

DOT officials have stood stoically in the line of fire. At last week’s inaugural hearing into the long, complex proposal, they appeared to bite their lips at times to resist the temptation to respond to the shower of complaints and criticisms. Instead, they listened politely to the parade of industry representatives and posed few questions. Even when Julie A. Cirillo, the acting chief safety officer of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, solicited questions from witnesses, she declined to respond immediately, saying she would post her answers on the agency’s Web site.

While department officials say they are merely following standard procedure in the federal rulemaking process, some observers say DOT is trying to ensure that any public utterances are clearly documented in the likely event that affected parties decide to sue the department after a final rule is published.

We wish DOT was less concerned about butt-covering, and more concerned about formulating work rules we can all live with.