L.A.-Long Beach directors: Industry misrepresents portsÆ truck plan
Southern California port directors accused two prominent transportation industry groups Thursday of misrepresenting a port-created trucking re-regulation plan to federal regulators.
The charges, contained in a letter written by the two ports to the Federal Maritime Commission and obtained by American Shipper, come one day after the two industry groups asked the FMC to investigate allegations that port officials have violated the federal Shipping Act in creating portions of the proposed $1.8 billion truck plan.
Introduced in April, the plan would set up a licensing scheme where the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles would dictate who can and cannot be involved in port trucking. The licensed truck firms would be required to hire drivers as employees and use clean burning trucks. Trucks without the port license face being barred from operations within the two ports. Licensed trucks older than 2007 would be required to pay a fee each time they enter a port terminal. The money collected from the fees would be used to help pay for upgrading and replacing older trucks in the fleet with newer models.
The plan, which began as a simple truck replacement component of the ports' overall clean air plans approved late last year, has since been adapted to include the employee only labor requirements. This labor component has drawn near universal condemnation from the transportation industry.
On Wednesday, the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and the National Industrial Transportation League sent a 14-page letter to the FMC, asking federal officials to investigate at least three alleged violation by the ports of the Shipping Act regarding the ports' truck plan. The letter said that the ports' truck plan would create 'legal, logistical and anticompetitive impacts that will cause immediate economic harm.'
In their Thursday response letter to the FMC, the executive directors of the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports criticized the PMSA and NIT League for writing to the FMC, saying the groups should have simply brought any concerns over the truck plan up with the ports. The executive directors, Richard Steinke of Long Beach and Geraldine Knatz of Los Angeles, also accused the industry groups of incorrectly describing details of the truck plan to the FMC.
'Contrary to the assertions and intimations of the PMSA-NIT League letter, the final elements of the truck component of our Clean Air Action Plan have not been decided,' the port directors' letter said.
Despite the ports' assertions in the FMC letter that the plan is currently an 'abstraction,' enough details existed in April to have the plan vetted by what port officials have described as 'the finest legal minds in the nation,' and proclaimed sound enough to allow the ports to prevail in any litigation.
Other than minor changes, the plan as presented by the ports remains identical to that initially announced in April.
Steinke and Knatz also told the FMC in the letter: 'It is, at this point, premature to assess the degree to which any particular part of this environmental program is related to statutes administered by the FMC.'
The PMSA, which represents 90 percent of the West Coast shipping lines, and the NIT League, which represents more than 700 transportation firms, both alleged Wednesday that the FMC agreement signed by the ports does not include language about the labor component of the truck plan, and so, the ports are prohibited under the Shipping Act from discussing it. The PMSA-NIT League letter does not call into question the environmental portion of the truck plan. The two groups alleged that merely by meeting to discuss the labor component of the truck plan, the ports are in violation of the Shipping Act, regardless of the content or decisions reached in the meetings.
The FMC requires waivers if two groups such as the port authorities wish to meet on items related to business. In August, the two ports signed an agreement with the FMC allowing staff from the port authorities to jointly meet to discuss and agree upon transportation infrastructure projects and environmental programs. Typically, the FMC holds the signers of such agreements to the specific language therein. In past decisions, the FMC has said that a high level of specificity in the agreement language is required to 'eliminate all necessity for interpretation as to the 'intent' of the parties.'
In their letter, the PMSA and NIT League point out that the ports' agreement with the FMC 'is entirely silent on one of the most intrusive and anticompetitive portions of the Clean Truck Program — the prohibition of independent owner-operators.'
The two port directors also minimized the importance of a port-sponsored economic impact report of the truck plan that the PMSA-NIT League referenced numerous times in their Wednesday request to the FMC.
Conducted by John Husing, a prominent Southern California economist, the report said that truck driver positions, support jobs and back office staff would all suffer under the ports' truck plan. Husing's analysis, which was presented to port officials several weeks ago, found that 376 trucking companies would vanish if the ports' plan was implemented, along with just over 2,250 back office and support jobs. A calculation using numbers in the analysis suggests that at least 4,400 driver positions would be eliminated by the ports' plan. An American Shipper analysis of the plan in July found that 6,150 driver positions would be lost because of the plan, along with close to 1,500 support positions.
Husing has said publicly that implementation of the program will likely result in more than a 50 percent short-term reduction in the port truck fleet, an 80 percent increase in shipping costs for surviving truck firms and 'a slowly building crisis as lack of drivers and trucks means containers are not delivered on time.'
Stienke and Knatz said in their letter that the Husing report was only 'a part of the process and will be among the many inputs that inform the decisions of the commissioners and staff.'
The ports' letter also cautioned the FMC that many of the aspects of the truck program were not in the federal agency's scope of authority. 'The ports have committed themselves to crafting a reasonable way forward, balancing the broad spectrum of interests at stake, including public health, commerce, and environmental imperatives, many of which are outside the ambit of the FMC's historical role.'
Steinke and Knatz conclude the letter by suggesting that if the PMSA, NIT League or any of the other stakeholders have issues with the truck plan, they should either bring the concerns up with the ports or pursue litigation in the courts.
While the PPMSA and NIT League have not publicly said they would litigate the truck plan if it were implemented, others have. Several industry groups, including the American Trucking Association, have said that they are either investigating legal action or are set to litigate the plan if implemented by the ports.
The plan is scheduled to go before the two governing port commissions for an approval vote in early October.
L.A.-Long Beach directors: Industry misrepresents ports? truck plan
