WASHINGTON -- The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will soon be considering a proposal that would more than double state bus and truck registration fees paid under the two-year-old Unified Carrier Registration Agreement.

The board that oversees the UCRA, which replaced the old Single-State Registration System in 2007, voted last month to recommend that the FMCSA overhaul the UCRA fee structure, boosting fees for 2010 by more than 100 percent.

The proposed increase has outraged bus and truck industry associations, and appears to be another example of where companies that are doing the right thing will be penalized because states are incapable of coping with the scofflaws that dont pay the fees.

"Any increase seems premature inasmuch as it appears enforcement of the UCRA fees has been lax at best," said Ken Presley, vice president of industry relations at the United Motorcoach Association.

Bob Pitcher, vice president for state laws for the American Trucking Associations and vice chairman of the UCRA board, told a leading trucking publication the new structure unfairly punishes carriers who have been complying with the registration requirements.

"We think that in the case of . . . most of the states, the effort in enforcement has been lacking," he said, "and without a decent effort at enforcement, it certainly sends the wrong signal to carriers and brokers who have not been paying the fees and it simply encourages them to continue evading the fees."

Pitcher said it was "well-established" that states were not collecting as much in fees as they had anticipated but they should be forced to do more to collect existing fees, rather than raising fees on fleets that have been honest about paying their fair share.

Presley agrees. "It would be better if they just sought payment from those who have failed to pay rather than increase the payments on those who choose to comply."

Pitcher said ATA and other groups would oppose the new fee structure and were considering returning to Congress over the issue.

Presley said UMA would be among those lining up to oppose the fee hike. "This increase will face stiff opposition from the United Motorcoach Association when it gets around to rulemaking."

It will be up to the FMCSA - through a formal federal rulemaking process -- to develop the final version of the new fee structure.

But under the proposal adopted by the UCRA board, the fee for a bus or truck company with two or fewer vehicles would jump to $83 from $39, while the fee for a carrier with more than 1,000 buses or trucks would go to $82,983, from $37,500.

The Unified Carrier Registration Agreement was set up by Congress to revamp the interstate registration system, extending it to trucking fleets and other companies that previously had not been covered by the Single-State Registration System.

Registration fees for for-hire truck fleets and interstate bus operators were intended to go down because the new system was supposed to be spread across a much larger base that included private fleets, freight forwarders and brokers. For example, the new system captured the huge trucking fleets operated by the likes of Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and others.

States were expected to collect the same amount of money as the Single-State System provided because of the bigger universe of companies covered by the UCRA.

However, right from the start, states began having collection difficulties. Many states were simply overwhelmed by the number of new companies from which they were expected to collect fees.

Take New York, for example. The number of firms the new system requires New York to collect from is 10 times greater than the number under the old system.

Under the Single-State Registration System, New York collected from 3,000 fleets based in the state, plus another 2,000 fleets that listed New York as their home state but operated out of neighboring states and provinces.

For 20 years, New York believed it had a handle on those 5,000 companies.

Suddenly, the universe of New York-based carriers subject to UCRA jumped to 25,000, with another 25,000 from neighboring states and provinces. The state was overwhelmed.

Additionally, culling the UCRA list has been difficult. When fleets go out of business they often stay in the system, so states waste time trying to collect fees from defunct companies. In just the third quarter of last year, upwards of 800 trucking companies went out of business nationwide.

Some state officials agree they could do a better job of collecting fees but insist it is unrealistic to expect they could register 100 percent of the companies in the UCRA database. "Whats really at issue is how much states should be required to do," said one state official.

Two other factors are at play in forcing the fee increase: A 2008 federal law that exempted trailers from the registration levy, and carriers, especially truckers, paying more attention to which of their vehicles are actually used in interstate commerce and subject to the fees.

One state official said that since fleets often "back out" equipment not being used for interstate business, and are no longer required to register trailers, the new structure bumps fleets into lower brackets, thus holding down their fees and reducing the amount going to states.

This official estimates that the number of big trucking companies subject to the top-line fee has probably dropped from an estimated 800 carriers to about 250 or 300 because the truckers are only registering those vehicles running interstate and trailers are no longer counted.

Pitcher of the ATA said that on a per-vehicle basis, just adjusting for the change relative to trailers "would have caused the fees to go up 50 percent per vehicle; as it stands the proposal is for them to go up 115 or 120 percent."

During the February UCRA board meeting at which the registration increase was considered, Pitcher said the private industry representatives pointed out that most states have done next to nothing to beef up their collection and enforcement efforts, and the increase will fall almost entirely on carriers that have been honest and paid their fees. "These points fell on deaf ears," he observed.

The states focused only on the fact that the UCRA program has not produced all the revenue many states had expected.