10 Oregon Trucking Association, Inc. Oregon Truck Dispatch Oregon Trucking As ociations regulatory program. An excess number of MCEO staff have been employed and distributed statewide for the express purpose of garnering more weighing events than actually necessary in order to provide audit data points for weight mile tax auditors. Registration staff perform certain functions that are uniquely associated with administering a weight mile tax, i.e., issuing temporary passes, managing weight mile tax bonding requirements, collecting delinquent weight mile tax accounts, etc. The Pre-Audit section of ODOT exists exclusively to prep files for weight mile tax auditors and houses one manager, one office coordinator, and eight preauditors. Some number of those positions could be eliminated as well. The demonstrable additional cost required to administer the weight mile tax as opposed to a diesel fuel tax is enormous. In the current day and age in which ODOT is experiencing significant cash flow problems as the debts of past bonded highway construction projects are coming due it strains credulity to wonder why ODOT has not undertaken these cost saving policy changes on its own initiative. What is possibly influencing the maintenance of that status quo? Quite possibly it is nothing other than institutional inertia. “Institutional is defined as, “of or relating to an institution or institutions.” Inertia in the sense of physics is defined as, “the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.” With those definitions of the two words individually, institutional inertia to me is the fact that an organization will remain at rest or if already moving it will continue on the same path unless acted upon by another force. The larger the organization, the more force required. In modern-day governmental agencies such as law enforcement or military organizations, this is a big deal. The world changes daily meaning missions and requirements change daily, yet we see organizations often change their course to meet the need or to incorporate best practices with the agility of a battleship turning in a bathtub. Some changes are quicker than others and some made rapidly, especially within smaller or more specialized organizations, but to the majority out there it seems change is impossible at worst and extremely difficult at best.” Every other state in the USA has a fuel tax for heavy vehicles over 26,000 pounds. Oregon’s insistence to carry on with a weight mile tax is not only conspicuously unique, but also extraordinarily costly to administer and maintain. Here we have only discussed the cost of WMT administration for the government. It is also worth mentioning that the industry subject to Oregon’s unique weight mile tax also is required additional administrative costs to comply. In this matter it is my earnest hope that someone in the public or private sector will stand up and emulate General Matthew Ridgway. It is well past time for a change. We need a maverick to step up. “My greatest contribution as the chief of staff was to nourish the mavericks.”— GEN Matthew Ridgway, Commander, 82ND Airborne Division (1942–1945) and Chief of Staff, United States Army (1953–1955). Regulatory Compliance, cont.
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