Legislative Bulletin - May 14, 2010

IRP Dispute Resolution Committee Preserves Trailer Reciprocity

A Dispute Resolution Committee (DRC) for the International Registration Plan (IRP) has agreed with arguments made by TRALA and denied a Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) request for interpretation regarding trailer registration reciprocity under the Plan. The IRP is a registration reciprocity agreement between states in the U.S. and provinces in Canada providing for payment of vehicle license fees based on fleet distance traveled in the various jurisdictions. The Texas DMV petitioned the DRC for an interpretation of the IRP’s trailer registration reciprocity provisions that would have allowed Texas and other states to refuse reciprocity for trailers registered lawfully in other IRP-member states. Texas DMV argued that they should not be required to provide 100% reciprocity for trailer registrations to businesses which they claim had no apparent presence or nexus in the state in which they had registered their trailers.

TRALA submitted formal comments to the members of the DRC in advance of the meeting on May 13. TRALA’s comments stated that Texas DMV’s petition was actually requesting a substantive change and not an interpretation of existing practices, and thus requires balloting and voting on the proposal by all of the member states. TRALA also stated that the Texas DMV request would have allowed Texas to unilaterally determine that a trailer was not properly registered in other jurisdictions and then deny reciprocity. Under the IRP, a trailer is properly registered if all of the laws and requirements of a member jurisdiction are followed, and the Plan does not provide for one jurisdiction to question the criteria upon which another jurisdiction registers vehicles.

To see a copy of the comments TRALA submitted to the Dispute Resolution Committee, please click here. For more information, contact TRALA’s Joe Sculley at jsculley@trala.org or (703) 299-9120.