WASHINGTON — Lawyers for special interest group Public Citizen must be getting used to sitting adjacent to representatives of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in court.

Part of a larger group, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, the organization filed a petition in District of Columbia court compelling the agency to release information about the controversial plan to allow Mexico-domiciled trucks on U.S. highways.

The group filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with FMCSA in October 2006 for information about activities surrounding any program to evaluate Mexican carriers that would be permitted to operate beyond the Mexico-U.S. border zone.

Public Citizen claims FMCSA is trying to ram through
the Mexican truck project without releasing any details

To date, no such details about the methodology for evaluating the project or its criteria have been revealed, Public Citizen says. The lawsuit seeks to require the agency to produce the materials requested.

Currently, Mexican truckers are restricted to a 20-mile commercial zone north of the U.S.-Mexico border, at which point they must transfer goods to U.S. carriers for transport to the rest of the country.

The Bush Administration has for years been trying to remove the limit as part of a NAFTA order. It recently announced that 100 handpicked Mexican carriers will be allowed to send their trucks onto U.S. highways in about two months.

As part of the project, the FMCSA will conduct safety inspections of trucks and facilities on Mexican soil.

Public Citizen says it is concerned with how such a program would comply with congressional restrictions and safeguards established in the 2002 U.S. statute that governs pilot projects, however.

“FMCSA has been stonewalling us by not supplying the information on this program,” said Jackie Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. “We’ve been forced to sue because the agency has been trying to keep this material out of the public domain.”

Yesterday, Public Citizen and other advocacy groups held a “Sorrow to Strength” press conference in which it blasted FMCSA — not just for the Mexican truck plan — but also for what the group claims is years of ‘failure” on other safety and regulatory mandates.

The groups criticized the agency’s handling of hours-of-service, electronic-on-board recorders, and reducing truck-related highway fatalities, among other issues. (Follow link in Related Stories listing below for more).