The motorcoach industry just completed a second year without incurring new federal regulations. Don’t count on three in a row, said the legislative and regulatory executives of the United Motorcoach Association at Motorcoach EXPO 2019. They encouraged participation in the upcoming UMA Legislative Fly-In on April 2-3 to help keep it so.
“For the first time in many years we had no new regulations—that is now two years in a row,” said Ken Presley, UMA’s vice president of industry relations and COO.
The industry, in fact, even thwarted regulatory proposals on issues including speed limiters, obstructive sleep apnea screening, a strict lease/interchange rule and increases in minimum liability insurance coverage.
The 2019 legislative agenda is not expected to be so quiet, said Becky Weber, managing director for the government relations firm Prime Policy Group and a UMA consultant.
“With the switch in majorities in the House of Representatives to the Democrats, we expect there will be more regulatory proposals. It is very possible that some of the things that we have defeated in the past could come back,” she said during the opening session of EXPO, she said.
“The Democratic majority is much closer to safety groups and labor, so we will have to be a little more on defense. We do have the Senate still in Republican hands, which will help us blunt the worst of the proposals.”
An effort to increase liability insurance minimums for motorcoaches—from the current $5 million policy to $20 million or $25 million—is likely to be reborn, Presley predicted. “The other ABA, known as the American Bar Association, would like to get an increase in their pay and subsequently they would like to see those limits raised.”
Fuel taxes
An increase in the federal fuel tax and the motorcoach’s industry’s 17-cent per-gallon partial exemption from the tax are likely to be on the table, Presley said. “The Highway Trust Fund is running out of money for a lot of reasons. The fuel tax hasn’t been adjusted since the era of Bill Clinton. Fuel efficiency and electric vehicles are reducing the revenues.”
One proposal floated in Washington has been a 20-cents-per-gallon increase in the 24.4-cent federal diesel fuel tax, Presley said. “Another thing that has been around a long time is the vehicle mileage tax—the talk about that is getting serious. The thought is that commercial vehicles are a natural for this because we already have some pro rata fuel taxes.”
“All of the thought leaders in transportation believe the fuel tax is not a sustainable way to fund our transportation system and the vehicle mileage tax is a more fair and reasonable way to raise revenue,” Weber said.
The motorcoach industry must continue to work with legislators to maintain its exemption from highway taxes, she said. “We should be at the table saying, ‘We take cars off the road. We reduce congestion. We reduce fuel usage. We reduce emissions. We are part of the solution.'”
National Park fees
Tourism industries are still trying to determine the details of increased entry fees due to be imposed by the National Park Service on Oct. 1, said Stacy Tetschner, UMA president and chief executive officer. The proposals will include combinations of Commercial Use Authorization (CUA) fees and per-passenger fees.
“We are working with the park service to get clarity as to who needs the CUA— is it the tour operator or the charter operator?” He said. “Then there is a $5 per-person fee. The fee you were paying before could be doubled, tripled or quadrupled. We are working on getting clarity on all of those.”
