The partial shutdown of the U.S. government could delay the publication of a proposed rule to reform hours of service regulations, according to a U.S. DOT official.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration officials hinted in December that a notice of proposed rulemaking offering potential revisions to federal hours regs could come as early as March. But the lingering closure of federal agencies will impede FMCSA’s ability to proceed with the rulemaking process, the official said.
Though the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration remains mostly unaffected by the shutdown, operations at other branches of the DOT have been hampered. More than 20,000 U.S. DOT workers are furloughed, including more than 400 of the 1,470 employees at the the DOT’s Office of the Secretary (OST). Also, 327 employees at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) 488 employees have been furloughed.
Those two agencies — the OST and the OMB — must review and approve the hours of service notice of proposed rulemaking before it’s published. Since operations at those agencies have been mostly shutdown, “everything’s stopped,” the official said, referring to the federal rulemakings process.
The official didn’t say whether FMCSA had filed an hours of service proposal with OST, which must clear it before it heads to OMB. But there’s “back and forth” required between the three agencies (OST, OMB and FMCSA), the official said.
It usually takes weeks, if not months, for rulemakings to be cleared for publication. Once cleared, the proposed rule will be sent back to FMCSA.
“Until [the shutdown] is rectified,” the official said, the hours rule will be hung up in that procedural process.
