The “Reinvention” of the state budget that majority Democrats shopped around to a few select media outlets yesterday before finally issuing a release late in the afternoon, includes a provision to explode the one state department that actually provides services for everyone over 16 and under 90: the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Ask 10 people on the street to opine about what they might get for their state taxes and it won’t be Educational Cost Sharing, nursing-home funding or even town-road dollars. It’ll be the sometimes-infuriating DMV.
And yet, the big idea Senate and House Democrats are offering is dividing up the DMV’s various functions among four other state departments. Sure, the DMV computers still can’t communicate across functions. Yes, there remain administrative fiefdoms in DMV that jeopardize overall efficiency. Yep, DMV Commissioner Bob Ward, the former House minority leader, is a Jodi Rell appointee.
Leave it to the Ds to extend the half-year-long budget impasse with a cockamamie idea. Maybe they should start small: by consolidating the Banking and Insurance departments, before they attack bureaucratic monoliths.
When the State is in a fiscal crisis what could be a better time to explore how taxpayer dollars could be put to better use.
DMV is one of the most mismanaged Departments in the State, and with each crisis DMV just fixes that problem and goes back to business as usual, If the Governor is not going to hold DMV management accountable, then the next option is to explore if breaking up the department could result in savings and service.
Look at the past history of the DMV for the last five years, the record is far from Stellar. Nothing ventured nothing gained