The American Trucking Associations and 16 other organizations are asking a court to force the Department of Transportation's Research and Special Programs Administration to reduce its hazmat registration fees.

The suit alleges that the fees should be lowered because of a $16 million surplus in the program they fund. ATA says the surplus will rise to $26 million by the end of the 2002 fiscal year.
RSPA instituted the federal registration program in 1992 to fund state and local hazardous materials planning and training.
In late 2000, the RSPA proposed to temporarily lower registration fees, citing a surplus in the Hazardous Materials Emergency Preparedness grant fund. Final action was delayed last year when the President, in his 2002 budget request, proposed to fund a portion of RSPA’s hazardous materials safety program from fees collected through the registration program. That proposal was not adopted by Congress in the fiscal 2002 DOT appropriations, but the president’s fiscal 2003 budget repeats the request. Therefore RSPA again delayed final action.