Driver Fingerprinting
Regs are causing drivers to avoid carriers that haul hazmat. Shippers will have to pay a lot more to get hazmat loads shipped.
Oliver B.Patton
Washington Editor
Trucking interests are deeply concerned about the new fingerprinting requirement for drivers who need to get their hazardous materials endorsement renewed. The hassle and expense of the Transportation Security Administration program will turn drivers away from the hazmat end of the business and force carriers to leave the business, an industry spokesman warned.
Some relief may be on the way, however. In response to a suggestion by a trucking executive, Congress and TSA are looking at the possibility of fingerprinting for only the most dangerous cargoes. Right now, the security measures apply to all placarded hazmat loads, including items that are not likely to be used in a terrorist attack, such as paint and fingernail polish.
The requirement went into effect May 31 as the third phase of TSA’s plan to make sure that all hazmat drivers clear an anti-terrorism background check. Last year, in the first phase, TSA checked some 2.7 million hazmat drivers’ names against FBI and immigration data bases. And this January, the agency began fingerprinting first-time applicants for the hazmat commercial driver license endorsement.
At a hearing before the House Highways and Transit Subcommittee in mid-May, industry and state officials spelled out their concerns: There aren’t enough convenient places for drivers to get fingerprinted, the process can be cumbersome and unreliable, and the cost can vary from state to state.
"We’re finding that drivers want to avoid carriers that haul hazardous materials,” said Dan England, CEO of refrigerated truckload carrier C.R. England. The result, England told the subcommittee, is that “shippers will have to pay a lot more to get hazmat loads shipped.”
Discussion of the issue generated a lot of heat at the hearing convened by Rep. Tom Petri, R-Wis., chairman of the subcommittee.
While TSA recognizes that the program “is not without its challenges,” basically it is working, said Tom Blank, chief support systems officer for the agency.
England challenged that interpretation. “TSA is not responsible for moving the freight,” he said. “We are. And we are confronting significant obstacles due to poor planning.”
Among those obstacles: Many drivers are finding it hard to get fingerprinted because there are not enough sites, the sites are hard to get to and their hours of operation are limited, England told the subcommittee. England was testifying on behalf of American Trucking Assns.
The industry got its first taste of these problems in February when TSA began collecting fingerprints of drivers who were seeking an endorsement for the first time.
TSA delegated the job of collecting fingerprints to the states. Seventeen states are using their own motor vehicle administration offices, while remainder accepted TSA’s offer of a third-party contractor, Integrated Biometric Technology of Nashville, Tenn., to provide the service.
The most difficulty has been in the contractor states, England said. Six-hour roundtrip commutes to fingerprinting sites are common in many states, he said, adding that in North Dakota, which had two sites as of May 30, some drivers are more than 200 miles from a collection site.
"The time spent getting to and from a fingerprint location translates into lost wages for the driver and lost productivity for the carrier. This is simply unacceptable.”
Another problem: If a driver with an endorsement in one state moves to another state, his endorsement may not be recognized – and the fee can be different than what he paid the first time.
England predicted that the number of hazmat endorsed drivers at his company will fall from 3,400 to 2,600 within three months of the May 31 deadline. Until now the company has required all its drivers to have the endorsement, but due to the difficulty and expense it will drop that requirement.
He said that just 5% of the company’s shipments are hazardous, but most of that is from one customer. The requirement in effect puts the company’s business with this customer at risk, England said.
"It has become a nightmare,” he said. “For that reason we are exiting (the hazmat) business, as are many of my colleagues.”
The result, he said, is that the cost of hazmat transportation will go up.
Another problem is what England described as “a glaring lapse” in the security of the program. Under the current system, the government does not tell a driver’s employer if the driver does not clear the background check: it is up to the driver to do so.
If a driver tries to renew his endorsement early – say, six months before it expires – and fails to clear the check, he can simply say nothing and continue to drive until the carrier’s records indicate that his endorsement has expired.
Congress is considering legislation that would remedy this issue (See related story.)
Adding to the problem are shortcomings in the communications systems among TSA, the states and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. According to Todd Zinser, deputy inspector general at the Department of Transportation, these systems often don’t work properly.
These woes were echoed by the people who are responsible for administering the program – the officials who run the state motor vehicle departments.
D.B. Smit, commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, said the process of getting the system up and running has been difficult due to a “lack of focus and decision making” by TSA. In the two years since TSA took over the program, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators has worked with five different TSA project managers, he said.
The current system is not going to work in long run, Smit warned. In some states, background checks are handled manually, through fax, telephone and e-mail. This is burdensome and expensive for TSA and states, he said.
Florida, for example, had submitted 2,179 applications since Jan. 31, and received only 735 responses from TSA as of mid-May. That has been acceptable so far because the number of new applicants is relatively small, but when renewal applications kick in Smit foresees more difficulty.
“The current interim process, if expanded to include renewal and transfer applicants, will cause applications for renewals to be mired in manual effort at TSA and in the states and will ultimately impede commerce,” he said.
And that was the mild part of his criticism. Smit said that TSA does not understand the driver licensing environment and has not worked closely enough with the licensing agencies.
“The (hazmat endorsement) program will never be successful if TSA continues its decision making in a vacuum,” he said.
Tom Blank of TSA responded warmly to this critique. “We think we are performing our mission,” he said.
He acknowledged that TSA is having trouble getting fingerprint facilities in rural areas, and that it is struggling in some states to keep the data moving quickly and accurately. It is attempting to address the first problem by deploying mobile fingerprinting centers, and the second by setting up a secure website for data transmission.
There are two general complaints about the cost of the process. The first is that it is simply too high: TSA’s contractor charges $22 for the FBI records check, $38 for the fingerprint application and $34 for adjudication processing, for a total of $94. The second is that the cost varies in the states that are handling the processing themselves. Some states charge significantly more: New York, for example, charges $75 just for collecting the information, according to ATA’s testimony.
In response to a complaint from Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., about these issues, Blank defended the $94 figure as not out of line – it’s about the same as the cost of obtaining a passport, he said.
RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS
Everyone at the hearing supported the concept of background checks for hazmat drivers, but TSA stood alone in defense of the approach it has taken.
England suggested that the agency delay the fingerprinting requirement until TSA has completed work on its universal identity/security card, the Transportation Worker Identity Credential, which will use some sort of biometric identifier. Smit also suggested delaying fingerprinting for renewals – at least until an effective data communications system is up and running.
There was no resolution to these suggestions at the hearing. And in any event the subcommittee members made it clear that they want fingerprinting to be part of the program.
But another suggestion England made caught the attention of Petri and has since become the subject of discussion by federal officials.
Right now the regulation covers all hazmat loads, from the most volatile and dangerous substances to run-of-the-mill household products. England pointed out that this makes little sense.
Petri asked Blank if it would make sense to refine the list of hazmat loads covered by the rule, and Blank replied that it would.
Since then, Petri’s staff has followed up on the idea with TSA and the Department of Transportation, according to ATA President Bill Graves.
It is not yet clear what shape a revised rule might take. One alternative, according to an industry source who did not wish to speak on the record, would be to create a category of “high consequence” hazmat loads, such as explosives, toxic chemicals and volatile cargo such as gasoline.
In any event, it is not a change that would take place very quickly. Graves said ATA will push a bill in Congress, and that would likely have to be followed by a federal rulemaking – a process that would take months at best.
Petri concluded the hearing on a down note. He said he would prefer that this be the last hearing on this subject, but realistically he expects to be dealing with it for some time to come.
Driver Fingerprinting continued...
