In a rare event, the Surface Transportation Board (STB) is expected to return to the U.S. Treasury in October a portion of its congressionally appropriated fiscal year 2024-2025 budget. The reason is productivity improvements that additionally are allowing the agency to chip away at some 100 pending cases, some of which have been gathering dust for years.
Since STB member Patrick J. Fuchs was elevated to chairperson by POTUS 47 on Inauguration Day Jan. 20, the STB has issued 28% more decisions through March 31 as were issued during the same 2024 period.
Fuchs credits the dollar savings and productivity boost to “empowering” those with significant institutional knowledge and case-law understanding—“masters of the record”—with greater authority to draft decisions, and the elimination of layers of redundant review.
Productivity also has been improved, Fuchs said, by returning 95% of STB employees to full-time status at the Washington, D.C. headquarters; by many “highly motivated and dedicated” senior staff volunteering evening and weekends to begin clearing the backlog of cases; and through “significant” organizational and process reforms.
Combined has been the STB’s Office of Proceedings with the Office of General Counsel, Fuchs saying that for an agency as small as the STB, “having separate and overlapping legal offices to draft, review, rewrite and redraft agency decisions” is unnecessary and inefficient. Fuchs also consolidated analysis functions into the Office of Economics.
The reorganization allows the chairperson, who controls the docket, to match cases to attorneys who are expert in a case’s subject matter. They consult with specialists in the Offices of Economics and Environmental Analysis; make recommendations to Board members; and use the feedback to craft an initial draft that is given STB members for final revision and voting. In addition to fewer levels of review, “the goal is greater collaboration on the front end of cases,” Fuchs said.
Additional productivity improvements are expected through information technology upgrades and the use of artificial intelligence to assist in case-law searches and update the agency’s case management system.
Fuchs told Railway Age he also has cancelled numerous contracts with outside consultants who, he says, do not provide “mission-critical output,” saving the agency more than 5% of its budget annually. One terminated contract reduction was equivalent, he said, to the annual average income taxes paid by 50 families. “Where necessary,” he says, “senior staff are capable of performing functions previously assigned consultants.” Fuchs said some of the savings would be “redeployed to improving technology for long-term efficiency gains.”
Upon completion of reforms and implementation of new systems, Fuchs said he plans to introduce to the STB website a “dashboard” available to the public that will track individual cases (the Board averages about 400 decisions annually); provide updates as to case status and succeeding actions; and predict, once the record has closed, when the next action will be published.
To further speed actions, Fuchs says the agency “will begin aggressive enforcement, with few exceptions, of a long-standing agency rule against replies to replies. Oftentimes, it is a gamesmanship tactic intended to secure a litigation advantage, but that can delay Board decisions. Expect other procedural reforms,” he adds.
Since Fuchs became chairperson in January, the Board has taken action on several cases that had not seen a decision for more than a year. Additionally, said Fuchs, higher-profile cases—including whether to restore regulatory oversight to certain commodities, whether to revise methodology for determining if railroads are revenue adequate, and whether additional metrics to measure first-mile/last-mile service have regulatory utility—will see movement by year’s end, as detailed in the STB’s first-quarter 2025 status report to Congress (download below).
