The bill also sets a deadline for the agency to produce its long-awaited Safety Fitness Determination rule, the timetable for which FMCSA has continued to push back.
The Senate’s Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill gives the agency $592.3 million in funding for the 2015 fiscal year and came out of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee Thursday, when an amendment was added to suspend the 2013 hours-of-service rule for at least a year until more study can be done to justify its restart provisions.
If passed the bill would require FMCSA to publish a final ELD rule by Jan. 30, 2015. The current highway funding bill MAP-21 required the agency to produce a proposed rule by Sept. 30 of 2013, but the agency didn’t publish the proposal until March of this year.
The public comment period on the rule ends June 26, after which the agency will begin work on a final rule, taking into account feedback gathered during the 90-day comment period.
