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The U.S. Senate Struck Down the AGC and ARTBA-opposed “Volks Rule,”
On March 22nd the U.S. Senate struck down the AGC and ARTBA-opposed “Volks Rule,”whichwould have allowed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to expand the timeline for prosecution of workplace recordkeeping violations from six months to five years.
ARTBA, as part of the Coalition for Workplace Safety, sent a letter to Senate leaders in late February criticizing the rule was “an extreme abuse of authority by a federal agency that will subject millions of American businesses to citations for paperwork violations, while doing nothing too improve worker health and safety.”
The Senate used the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows either chamber to disapprove of regulations passed late in the term of the prior administration, to spike the Volks Rule, named after the plaintiff in a legal case that triggered the OSHA measure. The House of Representatives previously passed a CRA resolution disapproving of the rule. The measure now heads to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.
Regarding the ruling, AGC’s CEO Stephen Sandherr said “The only thing that changes with the repeal of the 'Volks Rule' is that federal officials now have to abide by the six-month statute of limitations established in the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and affirmed by the Courts, for citing employers for recordkeeping violations.
Even better, construction safety professionals will be able to continue spending the majority of their time on project jobsites, making sure workers are safe, instead of in offices reviewing years-old records and cutting checks to government agencies."
Call for Abstracts for the Ohio transportation Engineering Conference (OTEC)
The Ohio Transportation Engineering Conference’s Program Committee is accepting abstracts to be considered for presentation at OTEC that will be held October 10-11, 2017 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
This year’s Conference Theme is “Advancing Mobility in the Connected World “ - Ohio is embarking upon the next wave of transportation innovation and mobility. To save lives, improve safety and optimize our system, we must embrace technology and implement practical solutions to further enhance our transportation network.
Abstracts will be collected electronically. Access to the submission form can be found on the OTEC Website at www.otecohio.org or by clicking here.
Abstracts will be accepted for the 2017 conference: February 1 - March 31, 2017. Watch for regular conference updates on the website: www.otecohio.org.
Questions: Contact Lisa Hall at ODOT, (614) 644-0273.
Infrastructure Funding Targeted for Reduction in President Trump’s Budget Outline
Tell your Senators and Representative to Maintain Funding for these Programs Last week, President Trump released a budget outline to identifyadministration prioritiesfor Fiscal Year 2018. This budget outlineis a mixed bag for federal infrastructure accounts as it proposes to cut billions in federal spending from construction-related programs. Proposed cuts include: a $2.4 billion reduction for the Department of Transportation by eliminating the TIGER grant program and limiting funding for the transit new starts grant program, eliminating the Agriculture Department’s Water and Wastewater grant program funding of $498 million and eliminating the Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant funding of $3 billion. Contact your members of Congress and urge them to maintain funding for these critical infrastructure investment programs.
While we look forward to working with the administration on the president’s promised infrastructure investment initiative, in the meantime, AGC supports maintaining funding for existing infrastructure programs. Contact your senators and representatives to urge them to ignore the cuts to infrastructure programs that were proposed in President Trump’s FY 2018 budget outline.
House Introduces AGC-Supported Gas Tax Bill
This week, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, Peter DeFazio (Ore), introduced the AGC-supported Investing in America: A Penny for Progress Act, which would provide approximately $500 billion – a 30 percent increase – in infrastructure investment for federal surface transportation programs. The bill finances these investments by authorizing Invest in America 30-year Treasury bonds, annually, through 2030. The bonds will be repaid through indexing federal gas and diesel taxes to the National Construction Cost Index and reduced motor fuel usage for the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. According to Rep DeFazio’s office, the bill is estimated to raise the gas and diesel takes by approximately 1 cent per year and includes a hard cap of 1.5 cents per year. For more information on the bill and a full list of supporters, click here.
While AGC supports Rep DeFazio’s legislation, which addresses our surface transportation needs through 2030, we will continue to focus our efforts on providinga permanent solution for the chronic Highway Trust Fund shortfall.
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