From the Wall Street Journal.

A House committee is investigating the recent resignation of Amtrak's inspector general, citing concerns about oversight at the publicly funded corporation at a time when it is set to spend more than $1 billion in federal stimulus funds.

Reps. Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.) and Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), the chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, launched an investigation Monday following the resignation this month of Fred Weiderhold, Amtrak's longtime inspector general.

Fred Weiderhold, who resigned this month as Amtrak's inspector general, testifies before the House transportation committee in 2005.

Mr. Weiderhold stepped down June 18, around the time a report he commissioned concluded that the "independence and effectiveness" of the inspector general's office was "being substantially impaired" by Amtrak managers. The report was prepared independently by a law firm.

In a statement, Amtrak said "there was no relationship between the timing of Mr. Weiderhold's retirement" and the report critical of Amtrak management. "We would like to maintain an open line of communication and are looking forward to cooperating fully with the committee concerning its request for information," said Amtrak Chairman Thomas Carper. Mr. Weiderhold couldn't be reached for comment.

The investigation is the latest controversy surrounding the government's inspectors general, who are charged with weeding out waste, fraud and other wrongdoing by federal employees and contractors.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) has been particularly critical of potential interference with inspector-general functions. In addition to examining the Amtrak resignation, Mr. Grassley's staff is investigating Mr. Obama's decision to replace the inspector general at AmeriCorps after he issued reports finding mismanagement. Mr. Obama has said he lost confidence in the AmeriCorps inspector general.

In a letter to Mr. Carper, Messrs. Towns and Issa cited two main concerns, including that Amtrak managers are requiring the inspector general's office to get their approval before it makes personnel moves or spends any money provided by Congress under the stimulus package. The lawmakers also criticized Amtrak's pick of Lorraine Green, formerly its vice president for human resources, to replace Mr. Weiderhold

From the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

The Teamsters Union today praised Congress for supporting a provision in the recently passed Supplemental Appropriations Act that will allow up to 10 percent of funds received by transit systems from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to be used for operating expenses.

Gas prices have pushed transit ridership to an all-time high, yet transit systems are being forced to cut services and lay off workers because of the recession's impact on state and local government revenue. The economic stimulus legislation had provided $8.4 billion in funding for transit capital expenses, but none for operating expenses.

"It doesn't make sense for transit systems to be able to buy new rail cars and buses when they don't have the money to put them in service," said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. "In today's economy, more people are relying on public transportation to get to their jobs, to school and to their appointments and activities. Congress recognized the potential negative impact and took the appropriate action so that transit agencies can continue to provide consistent and reliable service."

The funding flexibility provision was originally included by the Senate and was accepted in the conference committee. President Obama signed the bill into law earlier this week.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has published a series of interpretations pertaining to new Hours of Service laws taking effect for certain freight railroad workers, including operating crews, on July 16.

The Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 made significant changes in Hours of Service requirements governing BLET members. Among the major changes are:

-- Increases to the amount of off-duty time required between work tours and a prohibition against a railroad interrupting that time;

-- Caps on the number of service hours and limbo time hours; and

-- Mandatory days off when someone initiates a tour of duty on six or more consecutive days.

The interpretations explain how FRA will enforce the new Hours of Service laws. Currently, they are of an interim nature and FRA has asked interested parties to comment on the interpretations. The National Division, in conjunction with the National Legislative Office, is reviewing the interpretations and will file appropriate comments.

National President Edward Rodzwicz urges all BLET members to become familiar with the interpretations.

"Big changes are coming in a few weeks for BLET members working in freight service," President Rodzwicz said. "All members should download the interpretations and review them in preparation for July 16."

President Rodzwicz also noted that General Chairmen whose properties will be affected by these changes, with the support of the National Division, are continuing to attempt to negotiate a smooth transition for the implementation of these changes.

The interpretations were published in today's edition of the Federal Register and can be viewed, printed and downloaded via this link (13 pages):
http://www.ble-t.org/pr/pdf/HOSinterpretations 090626.pdf

From the Associated Press. Vice President & National Legislative Representative John Tolman is quoted below.

Has the National Transportation Safety Board become the government's "I-told-you-so" agency?

After this week's deadly subway collision in Washington, board member Debbie Hersman pointed to safety recommendations the NTSB made years earlier to replace older subway cars, which might have saved lives -- if they had been followed.

A commuter airliner crash near Buffalo, N.Y., on an icy February night killed 50 people and focused attention on recommendations by the board about flying in icy weather and pilot training, some more than a decade old, that the Federal Aviation Administration has yet to fully implement.

Overall, the board is still pressing federal, state and local government agencies responsible for planes, trains, ships, cars and trucks to fully implement 1,025 recommendations -- which sometimes become prescient warnings -- that emerge from its accident investigations. But the board can't order safety changes.

"We are frustrated with recommendations that don't get implemented," said Elaine Weinstein, director of the board's recommendations office. Acting board chairman Mark Rosenker wants to see regulators act faster: "Clearly, when we talk about a decade or more," Rosenker said earlier this year, "that is an unreasonable amount of time."

Three obstacles produce the inaction and delays: money, politics and technology.

Money includes both a lack of public funds and solutions so expensive that regulators and industry executives fear their cost would drive the price of service out of sight. Political will can include a philosophical aversion to government regulation, a tightfisted evaluation of costs versus benefits of any change or just a lack of public pressure. Finally, some board recommendations simply go beyond what existing technology can do.

Congress only gave the NTSB power to investigate accidents and recommend changes. When Congress completely separated the board from the regulatory agencies, it said the panel had to be independent so it could make "conclusions and recommendations that may be critical" of those agencies, if necessary.

Most of the board's nearly 13,000 recommendations since it began work in 1967 are not languishing. More than four out of five have been implemented to the board's satisfaction.

This work is reflected in everyone's life: rules limiting alcohol drinking by pilots, ship captains and recreational boaters, truckers and train engineers; shoulder belts in the back seats of autos and state laws requiring life jackets for children in pleasure boats; not to mention thousands of mechanical and procedural changes to planes, trains, vehicles and ships that are invisible to most who use them.

When the board's advice goes unheeded, money is usually the reason. In the Washington transit crash, one of the trains involved had cars built more than 30 years ago. Metrorail spokeswoman Candace Smith said it would have cost $888 million to replace 296 cars built more than 30 years ago, including the one that slammed into a stopped train.

"They just can't afford it," said John Tolman, vice president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainman, who has assisted on more than a dozen NTSB rail investigations. "They are totally underbudgeted and you have to weigh that against the cost to the customer." Metrorail is funded by the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

Money questions are usually political as well.

"Every government agency that makes rules has to look at all the potential costs and benefits of the rule," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. And those judgments involve not just regulatory agencies but also the Office of Management and Budget in the White House.

"Everything trickles down from the White House," Tolman said.

A former safety board chairman under Democratic President Bill Clinton, Jim Hall, said a spate of recent accidents related to ignored recommendations could be partially the result of the aversion to government regulation during the business-friendly Republican administration of George W. Bush. "For eight years, the Bush administration essentially did not regulate, from food products to safety to Wall Street."

But aversion to regulation goes beyond any one administration of either party and also includes Congress.

NTSB's Weinstein said her agency spent 20 years advocating computerized train controls to avoid the kind of collision that occurred in Washington, where such a computerized system may share in the blame. But she said the Federal Railroad Administration originally wasn't sure it agreed.

"Initially they didn't see it as cost-effective or the right solution," she said.

Not until the head-on collision of freight and commuter trains in Chatsworth, Calif., killed 25 people last September did Congress step in to pass a law requiring computerized train controls throughout America's railroads by 2015. It was the first rail safety bill in 14 years.

"We could use more" attention from Congress, Weinstein said.

Even when action begins, it takes time -- an average of five years for fully implemented board recommendations to federal agencies and industry. When state agencies are involved, the need for political will expands 50-fold, and it takes the board 10 to 12 years on average to get legislation in all states, Weinstein said.

The board has tried to get states to enact laws requiring lifejackets for children in recreational boats since 1993, and it's still waiting on Virginia and Wisconsin.

The 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island, N.Y., which killed 230, presented a different problem. Though terrorism was feared, the safety board traced the cause to ignition of fuel tank vapors and recommended making them incapable of exploding.

"That solution had not been invented," FAA's Brown said. "But engineers at our tech center kept at it and invented a solution and we adopted a rule."

But it took years, and Weinstein pointed out that the FAA did not implement the board's interim proposal: cooling the tanks while fueling on the ground. "They said they didn't want to spend the time on a short-term solution that they could devote to finding a long-term one," Weinstein said. "We classified that as unacceptable."

But Brown points out that the FAA has accepted more than 80 percent of safety board recommendations and not enough planes crash anymore to rely on the investigations to set a safety agenda. "We now collect data from 30 different sources to help us determine where to focus our safety efforts," Brown said. "That enables us to put out hundreds of safety directives each year that are not the result of safety board recommendations."

From the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

On Friday, June 26, a global day of solidarity will be held, calling for justice for Iranian workers. Four global labor organizations, representing more than 170 million workers, are joining forces to fight for the release of Iranian trade unionists who have been jailed for practicing their democratic rights to form trade unions. The global solidarity action will demand that jailed Iranian union leaders be released and that workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively in Iran be recognized.

Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa has already expressed his support for trade unionist rights in Iran. President Hoffa recently wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging her attention to the troubling matter of labor rights repression in the country.

One notable example of this repression is that of Mansour Osanloo, the President of the Tehran Bus Workers' Union. Mr. Osanloo has spent more time in prison than he has in freedom since the union was formed in 1995. He is just one of a number of union leaders in Iran who have been jailed for standing up for worker rights.

For more information on how to participate in the global day of solidarity with Iranian workers, go to: www.justiceforiranianworkers.org

Click here to read the letter from President Hoffa to Secretary of State Clinton