Senate message to NHTSA: Reform first, funding later

By Ryan Beene, Crain News Service

WASHINGTON (June 29, 2015) — NHTSA head Mark Rosekind's honeymoon is over.

In previous congressional hearings on auto safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) shortcomings in major defect cases were largely cast as the result of corporate deception and a lack of agency resources.

But a yearlong audit released last week by the U.S. Transportation Department's (DOT) inspector general zeroed in on NHTSA's own failures, and made clear that its problems go much deeper than funding.

It also added pressure on Mr. Rosekind, NHTSA's administrator since December, to push through significant reforms to justify the additional funds and powers he has sought for the agency.

The pressure comes as NHTSA mobilizes for one of the most complex automotive recalls in history to replace faulty Takata airbags in some 32 million vehicles, and prepares for a July 2 face-off against Fiat Chrysler over the company's safety record.

Mr. Rosekind appeared at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on auto safety last week alongside Calvin Scovel, the DOT's inspector general, who detailed a litany of failures by NHTSA over a decade in its handling of the General Motors Co. ignition-switch defect, which is now linked to at least 117 deaths and led to the recall of 8.7 million small cars.

Mr. Scovel told lawmakers he recognized the calls for more funding, but said: “Allocating more resources to an effort or to an agency whose processes aren't in line in the first place does not seem like a good idea.”

The senators seized on Mr. Scovel's audit report, which found the agency to be staffed with employees ill-trained for their jobs and haphazard in their handling of consumer complaints, a critical starting point for most safety defect investigations. Agency decisions on whether to open defect probes are poorly documented, the audit found, and guided by precedent and “gut feeling” rather than data and scientific protocol.

“This isn't about resources,” U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told Mr. Rosekind. “This is about blatant, incompetent mismanagement.”

Sen. McCaskill introduced a bill last summer that would have doubled funding for auto safety and tightened rules on recalls. But citing revelations in the audit that “shocked” her, she appeared to take a step back on funding and called for more scrutiny of NHTSA's progress on reforms.

“We're going to be watching very carefully, Mr. Rosekind, the kind of work you do immediately,” Sen. McCaskill said. “I'm not about to give you more money until I see meaningful progress on reforming the internal processes in this organization. You can't start throwing money until you have a system in place to make this agency function like it's supposed to.”

That notion chafed Joan Claybrook, a safety advocate who ran NHTSA during the Carter administration and attended the hearing. She said statements like Mr. Scovel's and Sen. McCaskill's can give congressional appropriators an easy excuse to reject requests for extra funding.

“Rosekind has the guts to say he's needed more money and the IG (inspector general) punted,” said Ms. Claybrook. “They've got the best administrator at NHTSA that they have had in years, but he's only got two budget years. They're trying to cut his arms off.”

Mr. Rosekind, for his part, took the heat. He accepted the inspector general's findings and committed to adopt all 17 of its reform recommendations within 12 months, part of his broader agenda of 44 measures that are under way or starting soon, including improving communications and statistical analysis.

And he pledged to do so with the resources NHTSA has. For the Office of Defects Investigation, that's a roughly $11 million budget that has been flat for the last decade, and 23 percent lower than 10 years ago when adjusted for inflation, Mr. Rosekind has said.

Mr. Rosekind has made repeated pleas for more funding and legal authorities to strengthen the agency, such as the power to order vehicles with dangerous safety defects off the road.