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.