This week the Owner-Operator Independent Driver Association filed a petition with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration alleging that over half of the states in the U.S. do not have the authority to enforce the ELD mandate.
OOIDA: States Unprepared To Enforce ELD Regulations
OOIDA’s petition argues that the FMCSA should hit the pause button on the ELD mandate scheduled to go into effect on December 18, 2017, because 26 states have failed to incorporate electronic logging device legislation into state law. OOIDA says that this means that those 26 states do not have the authority to enforce ELD regulations.
OOIDA sees this legislative failure as evidence that these states are unprepared to enforce ELD regulation. “We know that state enforcement officers lack the training and equipment to operate in an ELD environment. This lack of preparedness should come as no surprise given that half the states have not even adopted FMCSA’s ill-conceived ELD rule into state law,” notes OOIDA Executive Vice President Todd Spencer.
Many states receive funding to enforce commercial vehicle regulations from the FMCSA’s Motor Carrier Safety Assistance Program (MCSAP). This program, which provides $168 million to participating states in order to fund the enforcement of trucking regulations, also requires those participating states to incorporate new federal regulations into state law within three years. OOIDA argues that until federal regulations are made into state law, a state does not have the authority to enforce the federal regulation.
Spencer stated, “No state law enforcement should be implementing the ELD mandate until they adopt the mandate into state law and train and equip their enforcement personnel to enforce it properly.”
OOIDA further alleges that many states may be enforcing other trucking regulations without the proper authority using MCSAP funding because of a failure to update state laws. For example, OOIDA says that 20 states have failed to incorporate 2013’s 30 minute rest break regulation into state law.
Petition Asks FMCSA To Tap The Brakes On ELDs
OOIDA’s petition has called for a MCSAP funding freeze to the states that have failed to incorporate federal regulations into state law and hints that lawsuits could be on the way for states that continue to enforce regulations without the proper authority to do so.
According to OOIDA, the 26 states that do not have the authority to enforce the ELD mandate are:
- Alaska
- Arkansas
- Arizona
- Connecticut
- District of Columbia
- Delaware
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Massachusetts
- Maine
- Michigan
- Missouri
- Mississippi
- Nevada
- New York
- Oklahoma
- Pennsylvania
- South Carolina
- Utah
- Virginia
- Washington
- Wisconsin
You can view the petition in the document below.
[su_document url=”http://www.cullenlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/08.29.2017-Stamped-Petition.pdf” width=”700″ height=”1580″]Trucker’s Letter To Paul Ryan In Washington[/su_document]