Untitled Document

Large, permitted truck negotiated rulemaking: We finally have draft rules!

Well, that June 8 special board meeting sure went well, but only having one week before the month's regularly scheduled board meeting, on June 16, sure didn't leave us much time or wiggle room to get things done, so straight to it!

Stakeholders have participated, comments have been analyzed and categorized, and the board has provided guidance, so the foundation has been set to start drafting proposed rule changes. Again, through a series of meetings, including working with a valued partner agency – Idaho State Police – the Rulemaking team turned those rulemaking concepts into five draft rules.

Now, in an effort to keep our Transporter readers awake, I will not go into the details and minutia of these administrative rule changes. But, again, the department focused on substantive changes that would improve safety for the traveling public. These draft changes impacted brakes, driver-vehicle inspections and driver qualifications. Reymundo Rodriguez did much of the heavy lifting during this stage, but DMV Administrator Alan Frew had to call an audible, and before she knew it, Pat Carr was drafting rules like a champ as well.

With so many moving pieces, the department needed to stay focused on stakeholder engagement and process transparency. So, throughout this entire project, I regularly emailed updates to our stakeholders. Webpage development also became a significant piece to this project, as it is an easy way to keep everything in the public domain and for public consumption. This also meant that the Rulemaking team continued to grow and would need additional internal support. Even with the development of a little, tiny thing like ITD's new website, Pauline Davis stepped right up to the plate. As I worked on content, Pauline worked on organization/layout and before we knew it, this truck permitting rulemaking (formerly known as overlegal rulemaking) had a dedicated webpage all its own: http://itd.idaho.gov/rulemaking/.

June 16 was now here, so it was time for me to present these draft rule changes to the board. I kept things very high level as I related each rule change to an advanced concept from the special board meeting. Considering the complexity of some of these changes, and this unique rulemaking process in general, the presentation went pretty smooth. The five draft rules were approved by the board and we had direction for the next stage.

So, on June 17, stakeholders were notified of the Board's actions, the five draft rules were posted to the dedicated webpage and the second comment period began — running until midnight on July 8. Is there a light at the end of this tunnel? Well, it was much too early to tell. But, ITD did know that these changes would certainly generate stakeholder participation and comment submissions. We now had actual draft rules to solicit comments on and negotiate, so it only made sense to schedule a negotiated rulemaking meeting with all our stakeholders. That wouldn't be too tricky to traverse, right? And this time, we had a whopping seven work days to prepare, coordinate and execute everything. The adventure continues…