California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

STAR Awards applications due by August 1, 2012

The California Highway Patrol will host its Commercial Vehicle Safety Summit from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on September 18, 2012 at the DoubleTree Hotel, Ontario, CA. 

The event is offered at no cost, but registration is required to attend.

The Commercial Vehicle Safety Summit (CVSS) is a free educational seminar, sponsored by the CHP. The summit will focus on current safety issues, regulatory requirements and provides a forum for open and candid discussions with state and federal representatives on commercial vehicle safety issues.  Break-out sessions will focus on the following topics:

• Training Drivers for Success
• Managing and Lowering CSA Scores                                                                          
• Air Resources Board Forum                                  
• What to Expect - Terminal Inspections
• Hours-of-Service                                         
• Life Cycle of and Inspection
• Online Resources
• Operating Authority Guidelines
• Restricted Routes and Oversize Load Requirements

Keynote speakers scheduled for the event are CHP Commissioner Joseph A. Farrow and FMCSA Administrator Anne S. Ferro (invited).

The CHP will also present the Safe Transportation Achievement Recognition Awards (STAR) during this Summit at a hosted lunch. 

The STAR Awards program is intended to formally recognize California motor carriers in the truck and bus industry for their efforts in making safety their number one priority in their day-to-day operations.

For Summit registration go to: www.chp.ca.gov/programs/cvss.html  .

For information and to apply for the STAR Awards go to: www.chp.ca.gov/html/stars.html.

Applications are due by August 1, 2012.

NOTE:

CCTA/Western Trucking Alliance members can contact
Joe Rajkovacz at 909-982-9898
for assistance in registration/application.

Congress has passed and the President has signed a 27-month federal transportation funding bill, after 33 months of wrangling (that’s 1,010 days) and ten extensions, but what does it mean for California contractors and suppliers?

According to the figures from the Department of Transportation, about $3.54 billion for 2012 and 2013 and $3.57 billion for 2013, for highways and an additional $1.24 billion for transit every year.  The money doesn’t come in one big fat check, but is spread through a series of programs, each with its own set of rules, conditions and red tape. 

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt with the sticky question of what to do about the state of Arizona’s immigration law by dividing the baby, calling parts of the law an encroachment on federal prerogatives, while allowing the right of local police to inquire about immigration status to stand.

What the court didn’t do is deal with the consequences of the state’s effort to control its borders and its citizens which now include a massive labor shortage in the construction industry.

By Joe Rajkovacz, CCTA Director of Governmental Affairs & Communications

As part of my morning schedule each day, I Googled on trucking related news clips from around the world. Check out this link: www.mcdonaldworley.com/diesel-fumes-exposure.htm.  It is a website run by two young lawyers from Houston, Texas looking for clients in the trucking industry for their personal injury (PI) practice—they want to hold someone accountable for health effects from diesel exhaust.

It turns out they are not alone. When I Googled “lawyers, diesel fumes” I got 57,400 hits, finding thousands of PI attorneys sharpening their legal knives to attack trucking and construction company owners, equipment and engine manufacturers as well as diesel refiners.

In 2020 families will pay annual hidden tax of $2,500, state and local annual lost revenues to hit $7.4 billion

Sacramento - California families will be forced to pay $2,500 annually and lose $900 in earnings per year by 2020 as a result of the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), according to a study released by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association (CMTA).

The costs to families will start to mount immediately in 2013, the study says. Losses to employers and the state’s economy will be counted in the billions.
“These policies will create a large but hidden tax on families and will add new burdens to a fragile state economy” said Jack Stewart, CMTA president. “This new tax is not what we need while Californians struggle to find jobs, meet mortgage payments and maintain a reasonable quality of life.”

Stockton, California’s 13th largest city with 292,000 residents, filed for bankruptcy June 28 after talks with bondholders and labor unions failed, making the agricultural center the biggest U.S. city to seek court protection from creditors, out of the 640 American local governments that have failed since Chapter 9, Title 11 of the Bankruptcy Code was adopted in 1937.

“The city is fiscally insolvent and must seek Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection,” Stockton said in a statement released after its council voted 6-1 to adopt a spending plan for operating under bankruptcy protection. “In addition to the bankruptcy petition, the city will file a motion with the courts to share information from the confidential mediation.”

The California Supreme Court has answered the question whether charter cities need to comply with the California Prevailing Wage Law when building locally financed construction projects.
The answer is “No,” according to the decision in State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, AFL-CIO v. City of Vista. .

Building trades labor unions challenged an ordinance that allowed Vista, a charter city, to opt-out of the prevailing wage law on locally financed construction projects. Under the state Constitution, the ordinances of charter cities supersede state law with respect to “municipal affairs” (Cal. Const., art. XI, § 5), but state law is supreme with respect to matters of “statewide concern.” This concept of municipal affairs is also called the “Home Rule” doctrine.

Local governments now must show pension liabilities on balance sheets

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB, pronounced Gazz-bee), a federal board that sets accounting standards for local governments is now requiring them to report pension liabilities on their balance sheets for the first time – a move that could add millions and/or billions of dollars in debt to local authorities bottom lines.

Whether traveling America’s highways or wandering the halls of the Doubletree Hotel at Ontario Airport, you can always count on kind words, open, honest discussion and a warm welcome from our nation’s truckers.

During the California Construction Trucking Association’s summer board meeting at the Ontario Doubletree Hotel, Peggy Mew, a hard working Californian and “true grit” Patriot, was collecting signatures for the repeal of Senate Bill (SB) 48 when UCLA Professor Jim Enstrom (whistleblower on California Air Resources Board -CARB) came to the table asking, “Do you know where the truckers are meeting?” 

By Dan Walters

AB 1458 is a blast from Gov. Jerry Brown’s political past.

The measure by Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, would undo a provision of the “governmental reorganization plan” that Brown has submitted to the Legislature.
It deals with the California Transportation Commission, which controls billions of dollars in transportation construction.

Brown’s plan, due to go into effect this month, would consolidate a number of state agencies and hitherto independent commissions into a new array of superagencies. He says it would eliminate duplication and inefficient overlaps and give taxpayers more bang for their bucks.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) published a Notice of Exemption on June 19, 2012 in the Federal Register that will save tens of thousands of truckers both time and money extending their current Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC).

Wall Street Journal, 7-7/8-12          

When California’s economy was booming in 2006—remember that? – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and many Californians wanted to show their environmental virtue by becoming the first state to pass a comprehensive climate change or a CO2 emissions based law. And so they did, for which the tab is starting to come due.

Lawmakers and environmentalists predicted that the new law, called AB 32, would become a model for the rest of the nation. It never did. They also said the Golden State’s head start in developing green technologies would create thousands of new jobs. In 2008 the California Air Resources Board even estimated that the new rules and cap-and-trade tax would increase state GDP. In short, AB 32 was sold to the voters who declined to overturn it in a 2010 referendum as a green free lunch.