Office of Motor Carriers Stays Put as 1999 Spending Bill Is Enacted

In passing the $520 billion spending bill that will keep the federal government going until next October, Congress last week left the Office of Motor Carriers sitting where it is, under the Federal Highway Administration’s wing.

President Clinton signed the 4,000-page omnibus legislation without fanfare Oct. 21, only hours after the Senate’s 65-29 vote. The House had given its approval the day before by a 333-95 margin.

issing from the massive collection of appropriations, special laws, grants and favors is the language Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) originally wrote to shift the government’s chief trucking agency from one bureau to another.

OMC will stay put for the time being, despite Mr. Wolf’s protracted, bruising battle (see accompanying article). But the trucking office will have a different look in the field: FHWA Administrator Kenneth R. Wykle earlier announced his own plan to reorganize regional divisions, replacing nine FHWA and OMC offices around the country with four “resource centers” in Atlanta, Baltimore, suburban Chicago and San Francisco (TT, 10-12-98, p. 1).

The fate of what is a rather small subagency in the panoply of government became one of the major issues in Congress’s attempts to discharge its fiscal responsibilities before members could hit the campaign trail. It took the united will of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), with the prodding of Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), to delete Mr. Wolf’s OMC transfer language from the appropriations conference report, according to James R. Whittinghill, senior vice president of government affairs for American Trucking Associations.