TWU Local 100 joined AFSCME, LIUNA, AFT and other unions to file a brief in federal appellate court on July 13th in support of New York State in its case against the United States Department of Transportation.
Announced in April, $73.5 million in federal transportation funds has been withheld from New York by the federal government over what it claims are New York State’s compliance issues in issuing CDLs.
“These decisions were arbitrary and capricious,” the court papers state.
The withholding of the funds prevents New York State from properly maintaining and repairing roads, bridges, tunnels and other structures, putting not only our members who operate buses all day and night in danger, but their passengers—many of them children carried to and from school.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)’s reason for withholding the funding is based on the agency’s insistence that New York State should have followed rules they never announced and were not outlined or stated in regulations.
New York State has issued non-domiciled CDLs with expiration dates that did not match the date on the driver’s Employment Authorization Document, which is used to prove the driver is authorized to work in the U.S.
But it was never made clear that the dates must match.
The court filing also points out that the harshest penalty was the federal government’s first move—they never asked New York to reissue the CDLs with the date changed.
Meanwhile, despite the impact the lack of funding will have on the state’s highway system and its infrastructure, the federal government claimed that the real danger was the non-matching dates on paperwork.
“FMCSA’s assertion that New York’s “pervasive failure” in expiration dates translates to a safety issue is not supported by FMCSA’s own statistics, which show that New York has one of the lowest fatal crash rates in the country,” reads the brief. “And it ignores that all non-domiciled CDL drivers, before they are issued a license, must satisfy knowledge, skills, training, and testing standards showing that they can safely operate commercial motor vehicles.”
