DMV pleads again to hire more help

CARSON CITY -- The 1999 Legislature rejected the request of Gov. Kenny Guinn to hire 30 additional people for the trouble-plagued state Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety.

Now the agency is back, asking for permission to add 57 new employees, most of them to reduce the long waits for customers at offices in Clark County, Reno and Fallon who want to register their cars or get driver's licenses.

The request goes before the state Board of Examiners, of which Guinn is chairman, on Wednesday. Then it must be approved by the Legislative Interim Finance Committee, which meets Feb. 2.

If approved, the budget request would allow the full-service office in Henderson to stay open on Saturdays, the only one in Clark County that closes on that day.

The department wants an emergency loan from the legislative contingency fund of $216,000 to hire the extra help this fiscal year. It would use savings to finance the rest of the cost.

In February last year Guinn included in his biennial budget a request for 30 new positions for the field services division in the department to staff positions in Reno, Carson City and the rural offices to serve increased customer volume.

Upon review, the Legislature found that more than 10 percent of the DMV's existing positions were vacant. Seventeen positions that were created in 1997 by the Legislature were never filled, they found. Lawmakers nixed the request and told the agency to fill its vacant positions and use them where needed. It also allocated an extra $1 million to make sure there was enough money to fill the jobs.

"We filled the vacancies as best we could and put them where they were needed," DMV Deputy Director Ginny Lewis said Friday.

"We took bodies out of Southern Nevada where there were vacancies and that backfired," she said. "If we had been given what we asked for, we would not be back."

Of the total 57 new employees, 48 would be distributed to the field offices in Las Vegas, Reno and Fallon. The goal, Lewis said, is to get the waiting time in Las Vegas down to an average of one hour. At present it is 1 1/2 to two hours and can be longer on some days such as Monday and Friday. Customers can spend an average of two to three hours waiting in the Reno office.

Extra staff would also be stationed in Carson City to handle mail-in registration renewals, and there would be two full-time trainers. Lewis said the department wants to always have people in training so when a vacancy occurs, it can be filled as soon as possible.

There are now 21 vacancies in the field offices around the state.

One of the promised benefits of the new Genesis computer system, which began in September and led to slower service and a multitude of mistakes, is that it would mean the department would not have to hire as many new employees in the future because of the efficiencies in technology.

Lewis said that benefit probably won't be realized until 2002. Part of the project calls for permitting motorists to renew their registration and driver's licenses over the telephone or on the Internet. That should be operating in the spring.

"That's when we will see how successful we are," Lewis said.

Officials expect that with phone and Internet service available, there will be a reduced number of people visiting the department's offices. Lewis said the department won't ask for additional staff for those new programs.

The Examiners Board will also consider the request of Secretary of State Dean Heller for $788,400, most of which would be used for a public relations campaign to encourage Nevadans to respond to the census in March.

Ten years ago, Nevada had one of the worst responses among the states. Heller says that Nevada loses $100 million over 10 years in federal funds for each 1 percent of the population that is not counted.

In 1990 it was estimated that more than 2 percent of those living in Nevada were not tallied for the census.

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