Understaffed DMV falls behind on registrations

An overburdened staff at the Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety is being cited as the reason for a backlog of an estimated 12,000 vehicle registrations.

For the past 10 years only seven people have been processing registration forms sent in by mail, DMV spokesman Kevin Malone said, and it has become more than they can handle.

The department has requested more funding from the Legislature to hire an additional shift of from five to seven people to handle mail registrations, Malone said, but "we haven't gotten final budget approval yet so we don't know what the status is."

Of the 1.5 million registered vehicles in the state, the department renews about 128,000 registrations per month, about 45,000 of them by mail.

The actual processing time is five minutes or less, Malone said, but when you get 12,000 behind, that adds up to a lot of time.

Renewal announcements are sent out 35 days before a registration expires, which would be ample time if people didn't wait until the last minute to return them, Malone said.

But if someone waits until four days before the registration expires, the vehicle won't be registered on time, he said.

The normal turn-around on mail-in registrations is 10 working days, he said.

"Right now, we've got a three-week turn-around," he said. "As of yesterday we were working on the registrations postmarked April 26."

When the backlog gets too large, people are recruited from other offices within the DMV.

"For the past three weekends we've had 15 people working," Malone said.

Motorists could be ticketed by police if they drive with expired tags, but the DMV has asked police to cut motorists some slack.

"What we have done, is send out a law enforcement bulletin asking police not to ticket people for expired registrations if it is in a reasonable time," Malone said

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