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Legislative analysts recommend utilization standards, uniform reports after fleet study
Summary
A Legislative Services Office review of state vehicle fleets found thousands of vehicles, uneven reporting and recommended minimum utilization and disposal standards, uniform agency reports to the legislature and further study of centralized maintenance or fleet management systems.
A legislative service analyst presented a state fleet management study that surveyed agencies and found roughly 5,500 passenger vehicles in agency inventories and wide variation in how vehicles are assigned, used and retired.
The study, carried out by the Legislative Services Office, surveyed 60 agencies from March 21 to April 11 and compiled mileage, age and assignment data. Analyst Alex Payne told the Joint Committee the report found an average vehicle age of about 9.7 years and average mileage near 68,000. Agencies reported 34 leases among the vehicles surveyed and several hundred vehicle types beyond passenger cars in risk-management lists.
Payne said the committee should consider adopting minimum utilization standards (for example, annual or monthly mileage or weekly hours-in-use) and mileage- or age-based disposal rules. “The idea here is really looking at potentially those sporadically used vehicles and having a justification on file to why they’d be used sporadically, especially in the context that agencies requesting new vehicles,” Payne said in the hearing.
The report recommended the legislature require uniform fleet reports from agencies that include vehicle make/model, acquisition date, odometer, assignment method and weekly hours or monthly mileage. Payne also recommended exploring statewide maintenance contracts, shared maintenance services between departments, and a statewide fleet-management software system that could provide GPS tracking, utilization analytics and consolidated reporting.
Committee members asked whether the study evaluated the costs and savings of a centralized fleet management division; Payne said the team had surveyed other states’ approaches and could scope a future cost analysis. Representative Josh Tanner and other legislators pressed whether mileage-based reimbursement of personal cars versus state-provided vehicles had been evaluated; Payne said the survey touched on reimbursement and rental options but the primary focus was the existing state fleet and policy-level recommendations.
The committee asked for follow-up data: Payne said agency-level responses and the attachments (policies, disposal rules and the list of agencies that did not respond) are available on request. Justin Hayes of the fiscal impact team said the team will provide additional follow-ups to the committee as they proceed.
The study did not propose new rules or a single central manager; instead it offered a menu of options for the committee to consider and flagged several areas for follow-up analysis and pilot projects.
