I want to raise up a very important issue that HRUHCA is working on this summer that many people don't know is currently happening and that has the potential to negatively effect your bottom line in 2012 and beyond.

  

Northern Virginia Delegate Joe May, who is the Chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has instructed the Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to work with industry stakeholders who use overweight and superweight trucking permits to review the current permitting system for these vehicles over the summer and make recommendations to his committee on a House Bill (HB2022) that we (industry stakeholders) had tabled pending a review (what we are doing ths week and over the summer).

  

  

Please understand that the word "change" and the word "raise" are equivalent words in this "review." Thanks to a study that was undertaken by VDOTs research arm in Charlottesville, Virginia a few year's ago, key member's of the Virginia General Assembly involved with transportation have been influenced to the idea that overweight and superweight class trucks are responsible for more damage then they pay in taxes and permit fees.

  

As there is little support to raise gas or general sales tax by the party currently in power in Richmond, a more popular way to potentially raise revenues to help our crumbling roads and bridges is by raising permit fees to make the system more "equitable?" to those vehicles who are causing "most" of the damage.

  

The Commissioner of DMV, Mr. Richard D. Holcomb, must report to Chairman Joe May and his Committee on December 15th with his recommendation for "a uniform system of permitting for overweight and oversized vehicles..."

  

Delegate May has given the Commissioner what he is expecting in advance of the report and IT IS NOT GOOD FOR OUR INDUSTRY . In his letter of explanation to Commissioner Holcomb, he writes that he is looking for a "tiered" schedule of fees that (in his words) should have:

  

 "some relationship between the fees charged and the weight of the load. It is expected that the relationship will be a non-linear one since the amount of roadway deterioration caused by increased loading increases exponentially with the increase in load." "There has been a substanial amount of work done by both USDOT and VDOT (the previous study I mentioned) on the relationship between load and associated deterioraton." "It is expected that the new proposed schedules would reflect the results of some of this work."

  

I think that you will see from these instructions by Delegate May to Commissioner Holcomb that he is expecting large increases in permitting fees for overweight and superweight permits.

  

HRUHCA will be monitoring and provding imput that we hope will minimize these increases. We will be there representing you are working hard to convince VDOT, DMV, and ultimately the Virginia General Assembly that:

  

1) The current state or our economy (now) is not the time to implement a very burdonsome fee increase to one specific industry,

  

2) Our firms already pay large taxes, inspection fees, and permitting fees for the priviledge of driving the roads and bridges of Virginia and

  

3) A "permit fee increase" is the same as a "tax increase." Why on the one hand are legislators so adverse to raising taxes but they have no qualms with increasing permitting fees which are essentially "taxes."

  

I do expect that overweight and superweight permits will be raised in 2012. But I also think that we will have a direct impact on the amount of these fees and in the end we will save our member's money over what DMV,VDOT, and the Virginia General Assembly will want to take our of our member's pockets. 

  

Sincerely,
Jim Stepahin
HRUHCA