It would be churlish to criticize the Transportation Department (DOT) for relaying truthful information to the traveling public, but that's what we're going to do. Call us churls.
We refer to the new page at the DOT's website offering information to cruise passengers.
The page simply states: "To assist cruise ship passengers, the U.S. Department of Transportation is sharing information and resources provided by other Federal agencies."
A few short paragraphs follow, explaining the roles of other government agencies, such as the Federal Maritime Commission, an independent regulatory agency that oversees cruise line surety and bonding requirements. Also mentioned is the Coast Guard, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security that regulates safety, enforces the cabotage laws and represents the U.S. in international maritime forums.
The DOT page also contains a link to the FBI, which investigates reports of criminal activity.
Curiously, the DOT page omits any mention of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which conducts health and sanitation inspections of cruise ships in U.S. ports. We suppose that oversight can be forgiven, in light of the fact that the transportation secretary's current job description gives him no reason to know much of anything about cruise ship sanitation.
But leaving that CDC oversight aside, why should the secretary of transportation set himself up as a source of information about a topic that is outside the jurisdiction of his department? He has no statutory responsibility or budget "to assist cruise ship passengers." And because the DOT lacks any track record or expertise in assisting cruise ship passengers, what reason would consumers have to go there?
To understand what's going on here, one only need look as far as Capitol Hill, where Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, greeted the DOT move with a press release full of praise, calling the Web page a "first step toward providing consumer protections for passengers."
Rockefeller, it will be recalled, has been championing a bill to create a consumer protection bureau within the DOT to regulate cruise industry advertising and customer service, along the lines of the way the DOT regulates airlines and, increasingly, travel agents.
Rockefeller is retiring at the end of this term, and this initiative seems to be little more than a way for him to get the DOT's foot in the door.
We don't think that foot belongs in that door.
In our view, the recent history of the DOT's consumer protection initiatives in the airline industry has been marked by vague and ill-considered regulations that increasingly are spilling over the category of aviation regulation and intruding into information technology, travel retailing and vacation packaging.
Given this track record, a DOT incursion into the cruise vacation business would be an unwelcome prospect without a compelling need and a clear mandate from Congress -- which Rockefeller has so far failed to obtain.
In the meantime, the DOT Web page might do no harm to consumers, and for the few who stumble upon it, it might even do some good (unless they are looking for the CDC). But it's not the DOT's job, and until Congress passes legislation to give it that job, that door should stay closed.