FMCSA’s Hill Rejects Criticism of Mexican-Trucks Plan

By Sean McNally, Senior Reporter

This story appears in the June 4 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

WASHINGTON — John Hill, head of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, blasted critics of the Bush administration’s proposal to open the southern border to Mexican trucks, during an online chat with Transport Topics just before Congress slapped additional restrictions on the plan.

“For the life of me, I am having great difficulty understanding why this is such a fearful issue and people are hiding behind the safety equation, when in fact this is really about special interests and other anti-NAFTA activities and not safety,” Hill said during the May 23 chat session.

“We believe as an agency we’ve met the safety requirements, and we’re prepared to move forward.”

Hill made his comments just days before President Bush signed into law a funding package that contained a new series of roadblocks to the Department of Transportation’s plan to open the southern border to Mexican trucks.

Though the DOT’s plan has been unpopular, particularly in Congress, Hill said the agency is working only to comply with the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by the presidents of the United States and Mexico and the prime minister of Canada in December 1992 and then ratified by Congress, effective Jan. 1, 1994.

“We’re required under NAFTA, which was passed in 1993, to implement all aspects of the NAFTA treaty,” Hill said. “It was passed by the U.S. Congress, and it became the law of the land. My job in the executive branch of government is to implement what’s passed by the Congress.”

To that end, Hill said the agency was continuing to perform “pre-authority safety audits,” of carriers in Mexico to prepare for the border opening.

“We have presently done safety audits on 32 Mexican carriers who have passed. We have another six Mexican carriers who have failed those pre-authority safety audits,” Hill said. “And then, in the process of trying to line up additional safety audits, we found 30 carriers who . . . took themselves out of the process.”

The audits are required under legislation passed in 2001, which mandated DOT meet 22 specific conditions before pressing forward with a border opening.

In February, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced a pilot program to allow 100 Mexican carriers into the United States, igniting a backlash in Congress.

In an earlier measure, Congress sought, among other requirements, equal treatment for U.S. carriers wishing to go into Mexico and more public disclosure about the program (4-2, p. 5).

“In good faith, we worked with the Congress to adopt these two provisions,” Hill said. “We have already published a Federal Register notice, and we are awaiting comments now. And secondly, we have already been working with the Mexican government to allow for U.S. carriers to go south.

“We could start as early as July, if everybody will allow us to move on with our agenda and over a period of four months work up to the 100 carriers [from each country] that would be involved,” Hill said.

He noted that if the program were to go forward that way, Mexican and U.S. carriers would be allowed in “at the rate of 25 per month until [each nation] will reach the magic number of 100 carriers.”

During the chat, Hill also addressed a House bill that passed by an overwhelming 411-3 vote that would require much greater oversight of the program and more disclosure by the department.

A number of elements of the House bill made their way into the Iraq war supplemental funding legislation, which Bush signed May 25.

“It was a fairly significant vote,” Hill said. “Unfortunately, the bill doesn’t really add much to the safety piece, because it just requires the inspector general and other people to do further evaluation before we can open the border. . . .
“We’re planning on moving forward, and we have a [Transportation] secretary and a president who have made a commitment, and we’re going to follow through on that commitment until someone tells us legally that we cannot.”