Contract agents were in place long before I took over as Division of Motor Vehicles director in 1987. They provided limited DMV services in areas where the amount of business didn’t justify having even a part-time state employee on the payroll. Nevertheless, these communities were still required to comply with driver and vehicle licensing laws, with some limited exceptions. DMV’s solution was to contract with local government agencies to provide those services. We believed the local government motive for issuing driver’s licenses and vehicle registrations would be a public service rather than for profit. Even allowing the local government agency to keep a portion of the revenue to help provide the service, funds were still added to the tens of millions of dollars collected by the division annually.
As more and more unfunded and frequently unrelated programs were added to DMV’s responsibility, we had little choice but to add contract agents that were not local governments, particularly in our more populated areas. But the goal was always to improve public service. Notable was the emission inspection programs in Anchorage and Fairbanks, where residents were required to have their vehicles inspected for problem emissions before the vehicle could be registered, newly or renewed. This required a visit to an emission inspection station, then to DMV, or a renewal option such as by mail. Contracting with those emission inspection stations to register vehicles after testing provided a great service for their customers and for the public, making it a single point of contact for registering a vehicle. And since the stations charged a small fee for the service, the statutory registration fees were returned to the state in full.
With the advent of personal computers and the internet, more automation was possible to deliver services to the public, which was fortunate as DMV’s budget was continually eroded. Maintaining funding to provide reasonable services for the public was always frustrating, particularly when the revenue brought in was 4 to 5 times the cost of operating the division.
Now this plan to close multiple offices in areas that still require residents to comply with state driver and vehicle licensing laws, and allowing private entities to charge exorbitant fees, if and when private businesses are established, smacks of anything other than public service. The state could and should be using some of those tens of millions of dollars collected by DMV to provide the best service possible to Alaska residents.
— Jay Dulany
Alaska DMV director, 1987-1999
Anchorage
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