AAMVA At the IACP
Brian Ursino, Director of Law Enforcement, attended the IACP Division of State & Provincial Police Southern Region Colonel’s Annual meeting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on May 1, 2012. Brian was on the agenda and provided the Colonel’s and other senior staff with an update of AAMVA Working Groups working under the auspices of the Enforcement Standing Committee; promoted attendance at the upcoming AAMVA Annual International Conference; and solicited nominations for the Martha irwin Award for Lifetime Achievement in Highway Safety. In addition to hearing many other excellent presentations, Brian participated in a tour of Louisiana State Police Headquarters facilities including their Emergency Operations Center and Fusion Center. Here Brian is pictured with a Louisiana State Trooper in the Troopers Association Store. 
AAMVA's TWIR In Your Ear - April 20, 2012
Download | Duration: 00:06:09
ANSI B10 Meetings At AAMVA HQ
AAMVA is hosting national standard meetings this week for the Technical Committee for Identification Cards and Related Devices (B10).
B10 is responsible for the development of national and international standards for use in inter-industry applications and international interchange, e.g.:
* Drivers License/Identification cards
* Physical characteristics and test methods for identification cards
* Integrated circuit cards with contacts
* Contactless integrated circuit cards
* High and low coercivity mag stripe cards
* Optical memory cards
* Machine readable passports & visas
* Health care identification card (national project only)
* Thin flexible cards and tickets with mag stripes (new International project)
This technical committee is the U.S. TAG to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC17 and provides recommendations on U.S. positions to the JTC 1 TAG.
AAMVA Goes Green
AAMVA President & CEO
I enjoyed celebrating Earth Day this past weekend, hitting the road in my all-electric, emissions-free Nissan Leaf, rolling the windows down, and taking in all the beautiful sights and sounds of spring. After all, this is one of the “greenest” times of year here in DC, and I’m thinking of all that we in the motor vehicle administration community can do to help keep the earth a little cleaner and brighter.
An easy place to start is by making sure all the vehicles on the road are adhering to emissions standards. AAMVA’s Vehicle Safety and Inspection Handbook provides information on emissions Inspection and Maintenance programs, and provides an overview of the emissions test strategies followed within the U.S. and Canada. Check out AAMVA’s page on Safety and Emissions Inspections for tons of information and resources to help keep the AAMVA community green.
On the federal side, the Obama administration moved forward just last year with a proposed final rule setting stricter vehicle fuel economy standards. The new standards would require automakers to produce vehicles by 2025 that will achieve a fleet-wide average of 54.5 miles per gallon. It’s an ambitious goal that could mean great things for the environment and might just help make sure the vehicles hitting the roads are a little greener. On the state and local side, AAMVA members play a huge role in supporting jurisdiction efforts. And it is at this level that national and state policies are developed and implemented.
So join me and get outside this week to get a firsthand look at the beautiful earth we at AAMVA are working to protect – maybe it will give you just the inspiration you need to push for a greener tomorrow.
You’ve got WHO on the line?
It’s something akin to those sappy romantic comedies when the protagonist promises they won’t call their ex-significant other. They then grow through the milieu of situational slapstick, and eventually reconcile their differences for a happy ending. I’m not promising a joyful conclusion to the surface transportation measure, but the stars seem to be very slowly aligning.
The latest rumblings are that both chambers have come together in the most fundamental ways. The House Republican leadership has directed the Transportation and infrastructure Committee to draft another version of a short-term extension of Highway Trust Fund programs, taxes and spending authority which would continue to fund programs until the end of fiscal year 2012. (Anybody remember hearing this absolutely would be the “last” short term extension of a bill that should have been resolved two years ago?)
While they seem strange bedfellows, the House plan to move on this 90-day extension (if passed) would allow the Senate to go to conference between the House proposal and their much more extensive two-year measure (S 1813). This is due to the fact that the Senate has already instituted a unanimous consent agreement between the minority and majority leader of the chamber to select any House-passed bill and deem it to be the companion measure to the Senate’s bill. With the moon hanging pastorally in the sky, it seems they’ve found their match in whatever comes out of the House T&I Committee – a kind of political prearranged marriage of legislation if you will.
That being said, there are still some kinks in the process. First of all, the conference between two such unlikely and uncompromising measures could result in a lengthy and disastrous conference. The House is still pushing for inclusion of the Keystone XL pipeline provisions in their measure, and that has proved a large obstacle to moving the measure through both chambers in an efficient manner - President Obama has more than once threatened to veto a highway bill containing such inclusions. On the other hand, the Senate may have chosen the wrong partner to dance with. While it’s the most similar, there are sure to be striking differences between the House priorities and the Senate (as there always have been). That being said, perhaps the timing will show that it’s a small dose of medicine to swallow for both chambers who are more than eager to put the drama of a seemingly simple piece of legislation behind them – and perhaps we can all sigh with pleasure when the two competing measures are forced to share a table. Or perhaps the whole restaurant will catch fire.
AAMVA's TWIR In Your Ear - April 13, 2012
Download | Duration: 00:10:23
The Smart Money
On March 30th, the day before the current surface transportation extension was set to expire, the President signed into law HR 4281 (PL 112-102) which added another 90 days for deliberation on what was supposed to be a non-controversial measure.
I’m not one to make predictions, but I can see it clearly - three months from now, a Congressional leader will likely be promising us that “this is absolutely, positively the last surface transportation extension to pass this Congress.” Where have I heard that before? What, realistically, is going to change between now and then?
Senate Democrats logically suggested advancing their version of the measure (S. 1813) quickly rather than filing for another extension because three months from now will be far past the prime season for reinvigorated transportation infrastructure investments. And for those of us that enjoy traveling in the summer, think about the impacts of stalling those long-range plans until just prior to the July 4th holiday. That means an absolute glut of orange cones, not spaced rhythmically throughout the summer, but landing all at once. That means states desperately awaiting the stability and confidence of providing infrastructure projects (read in this election as a “jobs package”). States will forgo the first three months of the building season in areas where transportation infrastructure is the most easily equitable transformation to immediate employment upswings – a huge commodity in an election year where the economy has been the primary voter concern. If that isn’t enough to move compromise on the measure, what is?
Speaker Boehner has indicated that the House will return to moving its own measure once they return from their recess on April 16th. But if memory serves, that measure had difficulty getting out of Committee and was not broadly supported enough within the House Republican caucus to move it to the House floor. This measure stands no chance of being passed in the Democratic Senate. The events transpiring in regards to the House Transportation proposal have all the hallmarks of a daytime soap – sometimes terrible to watch, but keeps you glued to the details just to witness what will happen next.
With what I’ve seen so far the smart money lies in a return to the same situation in three months. Congress will have other priorities that will take precedence, and they’ll defer the incontrovertible until a later date. The real question is who will be promising us it’s the last extension this time? Get your office pools started, my money is on déjà vu.
AAMVA's TWIR In Your Ear - April 6, 2012
Download | Duration: 00:07:23
AAMVA'sTWIR In Your Ear - March 30, 2012
Download | Duration: 00:06:03
Representatives Gather in Geneva and Brussels to Discuss Road Safety and Licensing
By Mike Calvin, Senior Advisor, Strategic Initiatives, AAMVA
I attended the 63rd Session of the Economic Commission for Europe, Inland Transport Committee’s Working Party on Road Traffic Safety (WP1), in Geneva, Switzerland on March 19-22, 2012. There were 60 plus representatives from around the world in attendance, including Jeffrey Michael, Associate Administrator from NHTSA representing the United States. WP1 meets twice a year. This is the Working Party within the UN responsible for the Road Safety and Licensing provisions of the Geneva and Vienna Conventions of 1948 and 1968 respectively. I attend the WP1 meetings as a representative of ISO and the work that AAMVA is involved with internationally in the “Standards” arena as it relates to Driver Licensing and the Driver License document. Learn more about WP1 at http://www.unece.org/trans/main/welcwp1.html
I was also in Brussels, Belgium, meeting with one of AAMVA’s sister organization’s in Europe, CIECA. CIECA is the International Commission for Driver Testing Authorities, active in the fields of Road Safety and Driver Testing. They have 56 member jurisdictions and organizations from 36 countries worldwide. The focus of my trip, was to begin discussions with their leadership on ways that AAMVA and CIECA can start working closer together. Learn more about CIECA at http://www.cieca.be/
