LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After reaching its $1 million fundraising mark for 2014, an American Trucking Associations-led coalition that promotes the industry’s safety record plans to surpass that this year, a senior industry executive said at the Mid-America Trucking Show’s media day March 25.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Espar Products Inc. will formally announce during the Mid-America Trucking Show that it is changing its name to Eberspaecher.

WASHINGTON — Two of the country’s top transportation leaders reaffirmed their opposition to raising fuel taxes to keep highway programs funded for several years, a setback for proponents of increasing the user fees, including trucking industry leaders.

House Republicans’ budget blueprint unveiled March 17 would enhance states’ control over critical highway projects, and it would establish a reserve fund to develop proposals for bringing surface-transportation legislation to passage.

WASHINGTON — Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) soon will unveil legislation that would reform the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s Compliance, Safety, Accountability (CSA) program, the senator told Transport Topics.

The Senate on March 12 easily confirmed Christopher Hart to be the full-time chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

WASHINGTON—Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said tax policy writers in the Senate are “working behind the scenes” to unveil a plan that would ensure long-term funding for highway programs, before a law authorizing such funding expires May 31.

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will be promoting his policy priorities when he speaks at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., on March 16.

Daphne Jefferson was named deputy administrator at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in February, succeeding Bill Bronrott, according to a letter from the agency’s acting administrator obtained by Transport Topics.