WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Surface Transportation has announced plans to impose 22 new user fees for services that have been provided free of charge and to raise six “below-cost” user fees to $150. In addition, the board will update fees for nine existing fee items and amend, renumber and delete certain rules pertaining to the fee collection process, the Journal of Commerce reported.
At least one transportation attorney has expressed concern that the new fees could discourage shippers from bringing complaints to the STB. The proposal includes a “fee shifting” approach in which the party against the board ultimately rules on a discover request must pay the filing fee.
“I find it outrageous,” said transportation attorney Fritz Kahn, who once was general counsel of the STB’s predecessor agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission. “The way they theorize it, they may as well start charging for filing answers to complaints, or protesting proposed (railroad) abandonments,” he said. “This is increasingly denying public access to the agency.”
According to the STB’s proposal, released Aug. 30, the rationale for the new fees and other changes comes from a 1993 circular published by the Office of Management and Budget. The circular “establishes federal policy regarding user fees and states that the general policy of the federal government is that ‘[a] user charge will be assessed against each identifiable recipient for special benefits derived from federal activities beyond those received by the general public,'” the STB noted.
In addition, the STB proposed to set the fee to small shippers for a railroad rate-complaint case at a below-cost level of $150. This fee is based on legislation introduced by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., on June 26, 2001, “providing that the board may not charge a fee greater than the fee charged by district courts of the United States for a comparable filing,” the STB noted.
Other proposed new fees would cover the cost of services performed in the past but outside the scope of previous board fee studies, the STB noted.
Details on all the fees under consideration in the rulemaking, comments for which are due Oct. 4, can be found on the STB’s website at www.stb.dot.gov.