OMB Approves Revised FMCSA Hazmat Permit ICR

The OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced yesterday that it had approved the revised information collection request (ICR) renewal of the DOT’s Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration (FMCSA) for their hazardous materials safety permit program. This information collection requires motor carriers to provide estimates of their anticipated annual shipments of hazardous materials (HM), complete application forms, provide shipment estimates, and communication records to the FMSCA.

As I noted in my blog post about the 60-day ICR notice publication FMCSA more than doubled their estimate of the burden hours associated with this document due to the increased numbers of trucks permitted to handle the hazardous material loads covered under the requirements of 49 USC 5109.

Since the safety permit program referred to in this ICR is a carrier permit program and not a vehicle permit program, FMCSA must estimate the number of vehicles covered under the requirements of this ICR based upon information in the Motor Carrier Management Information System. The previous ICR submission showed an estimate of 15,000 trucks making 280 hazmat shipments per year against this submission’s estimate of 41,500 trucks making 280 hazmat shipments per year. That is almost a three-fold increase in the rate of hazmat shipments in just three years.

There were three public comments (here, here and here) on the 60-day ICR notice that FMCSA responded to in their 30-day ICR notice. One comment was effectively not related to the ICR and the other two addressed the additional burden associated with advanced load tracking techniques that are not required under this program.

OMB Approves TSA ICR for Pipeline Security Incident Reporting

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the renewal of an information collection request (ICR) submitted by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) supporting that agency’s pipeline security incident information collection activities. The ICR was approved ‘consistent with change’.

As I noted in an earlier blog post about the ICR TSA revised downward slightly the burden estimate for this ICR. As I suggested in that post the burden change was based upon “the actual number of incidents reported”.

There is no specific information, however, about what further change was made that OIRA took into consideration when they approved the ICR. What is clear is that the supporting information document that would have been submitted with the ICR renewal request (submitted on 12-27-13) was changed at the last minute; it was re-submitted yesterday according to the OIRA web site. No explanation is provided as to what changes were made to that document and the original version is not available.

OMB Approves TSA Highway Base Program ICR

On Tuesday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) request for approval of an information collection request (ICR) to support the agency’s new Baseline Assessment for Security Enhancement (BASE) program that replaces their old Corporate Security Review Program. This BASE ICR supports the portion of the program looking at the over-the-highway transportation sector.

There was apparently some sort of administrative finagling going on with this ICR. The original 60-day Notice was published in May of 2012 and the 30-day Notice was published in November of the same year. According to OIRA, the ICR was not actually submitted to them until March of 2013. Something was wrong with that submission so TSA withdrew the ICR application on Monday and resubmitted the same day with all of the same supporting information. It was approved the same day. I can’t find any difference between the two submissions.

The other odd thing about this ICR is that while it covers all over-the-highway modes of transportation, it specifically does not cover Hazmat shippers or transporters. In their supporting statement [Word® download link] TSA notes (pg 4):

“While TSA is the lead federal agency for all modes of transportation, at this time TSA has decided to not conduct the Highway BASE of hazardous material carriers and shippers in order to avoid duplication with Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) assessments for compliance with requirements of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA).”

This is one of the problems that TSA has continued to have with surface security issues; since they were removed from the Transportation Department when DHS was stood up there have been numerous conflicts between DOT agencies and TSA over jurisdictional issues. This is reflected in the comment that was appended to by blog post on the 30-day ICR notice.

While the PHMSA hazmat transportation security regulations (49 CFR 172.800 et seq) are generic with no truly enforceable standards, they have at least been given the authority to require security plans. Congress has not given TSA any real authority to regulate hazmat transportation beyond the limited authority to address a limited number of hazmat materials transported by rail (49 CFR 1580).

OMB Announces Approval of PHMSA Pipeline Accident Report ICR

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved, with change, the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration’s (PHMSA) information collection request (ICR) supporting the pipeline accident reporting system. I have discussed the proposed changes to the ICR here and here. The ‘with change’ statement here means changes made due to industry comments received on the 30-day ICR notice. PHMSA’s response to those comments can be found here.

It is unusual to receive industry comments on an ICR notice. In this instance there were comments submitted on both notices. Unfortunately the public response to the 30-day notice comments is buried on an OIRA web site where most people will never see it (Okay, most people probably don’t care).

OMB Approves First Responder Communities of Practice ICR

Friday, the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had given a short term approval (1 year) to the DSH S&T’s information collection request renewal for their First Responder Communities of Practice (FRCoP) program. This covers the registration information collected by S&T for that program.

This is not in response to the 60-day ICR notice that I wrote about last week. Apparently S&T knew about the short term renewal that was going to be published and was trying to get an early start on that renewal.

This renewal contains the same ‘Terms of Clearance’ notice as did the previous approval from March of last year:

“If DHS submits a renewal of this collection, it should include a report with the following information: • How the First Responders Community of Practice is being used. Has the intended audience been reached? • An analysis by DHS of the practical utility of the collection. • An analysis by DHS of other similar platforms currently in use by first responders.”

So apparently S&T is being given a second chance to get this information right.