Board of Examiners to loan DMV $216,000

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2000 | 11:09 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state Board of Examiners Wednesday gave preliminary approval for a loan of $216,769 to the state Department of Motor Vehicles to shorten the lines of waiting motorists, mostly in Clark County.

But the board rejected an idea that motorists should get a money-back guarantee if they had to wait more than one hour in line.

The agency, which now must get approval for the loan from the Legislative Interim Finance Committee Feb. 2, wants to hire 50 additional people to make sure all the service windows are staffed 85 percent of the time and to open the Henderson office to Saturday service.

Under the proposal nine new employees would be hired in Clark County for the Carey office; two at Flamingo; 17 at Henderson and the Sahara office would be reduced by five workers. There would be 24 added employees in Reno and one in Fallon plus two trainers to get future employees ready for the job.

At many of the offices the wait is up to an hour and 45 minutes and the department wants to lower it to one hour.

Gov. Kenny Guinn, the board chairman, said there must be more workers to keep the service window open to handle an ever increasing amount of business. He said waits of 90 minutes and longer were "unacceptable."

Secretary of State Dean Heller, a member of the examiners board, questioned how the department would be held accountable if it didn't reduce the waiting time. He noted his office gives a money-back guarantee if it doesn't get its work out for the public in a certain amount of time.

In the past three years, he said there has only been one person who got his money back.

But state Budget Director Perry Comeaux said, "I don't think DMV better do that." Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, the third member of the examiners board, said it was "not feasible" for the department to offer a money back guarantee if the motorist had to wait longer than an hour.

Some transactions, she said were more time-consuming than others. She said the department was "behind the eight ball because of the growth."

Guinn said there were more variables in registering vehicles and issuing drivers licenses than in processing documents in the secretary of state's office. There are 70 different languages used in Nevada, which adds to the complexity.

And a document that may be altered, could take two to three hours to straighten out, thereby holding up the line.

"We're going out on a limb to say it would be less than an hour," the governor said.

The $216,760 loan would get the department through this fiscal year which ends June 30th. It initially suggested it receive another $1.4 million to carry it from July 1, 2000 to March 2001 when the full Legislature will meet.

The department will repay the loan from the state treasury with highway fees, which are used to operate the department.

The request for the extra $1.4 million was delayed. Guinn said he wanted to see how the new technology is going to work before taking any action. In Spring the department will roll out a system where motorists can renew their registration and their drivers licenses by either telephone or by the Internet. Clark and Washoe counties residents will, if the program succeeds, be able to renew their vehicle registration when they get their yearly smog tests.