Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/647193
18 // OWNER OPERATOR // FEBRUARY 2016 News & Notes House overwhelmingly passes joint long-term highway bill By Matt Cole and James Jaillet The U.S. House of Representatives approved the five-year, $305 billion highway-funding bill that was agreed upon by a conference com- mittee Dec. 1. The House passed the Fixing America's Sur- face Transportation (FAST) Act by a 359-65 vote. The five-year bill is a fully-funded resolu- tion between the two chambers' separate fund- ing and regulatory packages. The final version of the long-term highway bill includes the industry-hoped-for removal from public view major components of the DOT's Compliance, Safety, Accountability carrier scoring and ranking program. The bill, dubbed the FAST Act, also requires FMCSA to fix the program prior to making the scores public again, just as the original drafts passed by each chamber of Congress earlier this year dictated. For the trucking industry, the FAST Act in- cludes CSA reform, driver drug testing reform and more. Not included in the bill is size/weight reform and "carrier hiring standards." In: CSA reform: As noted above, the bill removes from public view the bulk of the Com- pliance, Safety, Accountability system's Safety Measurement System, the heart of the CSA program. The legislation removes carriers' percentile rankings in the seven SMS BASICs and requires FMCSA and the Government Ac- countability Office to identify the program's faults, develop a plan to fix them and then im- plement those fixes before the system can go live again. Congress in the bill directs FMCSA to study issues like carriers' crash risk and its correla- tion to CSA scores, CSA's rankings methodol- ogy, accuracy of the CSA data, incorporating crash fault accountability and how the public uses CSA scores in making business decisions or overall safety determinations of carriers. The bill requires the report to be produced within 18 months of the bill becoming law. Lawmakers also in the bill included language to bar FMCSA from continuing to use the sys- tem and its data to make safety determinations about carriers. Until FMCSA can implement a so-called "corrective action plan," the CSA program will remain dormant. Driver drug testing reform: The bill allows carriers to drug test drivers via hair test in lieu of a urine test, but not until the federal Depart- ment of Health and Human Services establish- es guidelines for hair testing. The bill requires DHHS to produce the guidelines within a year of the bill's enactment.