What's to come of DMV?

When Dave Boliek ran for State Auditor, he promised to investigate what it would take to fix the NC Department of Motor Vehicles. True to his word, Boliek has released a 435-page audit of his findings.

Some have complained about how much time and money was spent to tell us what we already knew, namely that DMV had too few employees, pay was insufficient and that DMV’s shortcomings were not a high priority.

The report stated that wait times at DMV required, on average, 1 hour and 15 minutes, a statistic almost laughable to anyone who has had to deal with DMV recently. It noted that over the past 20 years our state’s population has grown by 2.5 million people (29 percent) while the number of driver’s license examiners has increased by only 52. Further, 29 percent of those positions are vacant. Burnout, safety concerns, lack of support, poor training, verbal abuse and low salaries are big employee concerns.

DMV reports to the NC Department of Transportation and relationships between the two are reportedly not good. 30 percent of DOT’s overall revenues come from DMV, but it receives only 2.8 percent of DOT’s expenditures. It is the gnat on the DOT elephant.

Only 31 percent of DMV’s staffing requests were included in DOT’s budget requests to the legislature. DOT left out DMV customer satisfaction in overall data performance reports and DMV was not included in planning and procurement improvement efforts by DOT.

Anyone who has followed state government closely for any length of time knows DMV has been a problem for more than 30 years. It, along with the Ferry Division, was often a political dumping ground. So long as complaints and problems weren’t too onerous DMV just kept on keeping on. But the complaints are now so loud as to no longer be ignored.

Boliek’s conclusion is that DMV be removed from the Department of Transportation to “an autonomous agency or authority with direct control over its budget, strategic planning, and operations.” Whether intentional or not, this has political implications.

DOT is an executive branch agency and, since both the DOT Secretary and the DMV Commissioner are appointed by the governor, the inference is that the governor has failed to recognize and fix the problems. Said governor happens to be a Democrat, ergo the problems can be blamed on Democrats.

But blame doesn’t fall only on the executive branch. The legislative branch is equally or maybe even more at fault, and that branch is controlled by Republicans.

Nowhere does the audit report the many times former DMV commissioner Wayne Goodwin went to the legislature citing the problems and begging for more examiners, better pay or funds to modernize electronic record keeping. It is the legislature that creates the number of employees allowed, the pay for them and determines the appropriation of funds for the agency.

And, while population growth exacerbated recent problems, it also must be acknowledged that the horrible decision to move the DMV headquarters from Raleigh to Rocky Mount played a huge role.

The previous DMV headquarters was determined to be unsafe due to asbestos and fire safety concerns. Bids were received for new quarters, with both spoken and unspoken insistence to accept the lowest bid, which happened to be in Rocky Mount. Many DMV employees protested that such a move would be a hardship, but the move was made. The News and Observer reported that “about one-third of headquarters employees have chosen to leave DMV rather than follow their job an hour’s drive east to Rocky Mount.” New employees complicated DMV’s problems.

How to fix DMV? Two issues must be addressed. Where should the agency be housed is one of them, but it won’t really matter who has to deal with the administration if the more urgent personnel and funding issues are not fixed.

Most every North Carolinian over 16 must deal with DMV at some time and the growing clamor of complaints has surely been heard by the 170 men and women in our General Assembly. What was their response?

This year’s Senate budget didn’t add additional funding for DMV. The House budget, on the other hand, proposed spending an additional $800,000 and hiring 40 more license examiners in the year that started July 1, followed by an additional $1.8 million to add 21 more examiners in the following year. Unfortunately, the legislature never passed a budget, so no new dollars have been appropriated. Nothing significant is going to improve until the legislature acts!

Many have protested removing DMV from DOT, but I believe such a move is advisable.  I suggest DMV be put under the purview of the legislature. After all, lawmakers make the rules and fund the operations. DMV complaints can go directly to a citizen’s House or Senate member.

Let’s see if the legislature can cut wait times and stop the complaints.

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at tomcamp@ncspin.com