DMV: H105 would add reporting but raises suspension and notification questions

The Division of Motor Vehicles told the Judiciary committee that it does not oppose H105, a bill to expand the Youth Substance Awareness and Safety Program, but said parts of the proposal will require new reporting and procedural changes to avoid gaps in how suspensions and completions are recorded.

"DMV does not oppose the bill," said Matt Russo, deputy commissioner for the Division of Motor Vehicles, describing the change the agency expects to its records process. Russo told lawmakers the bill as written would add a new report that pulls data the DMV already receives continuously.

Committee members focused their questions on three implementation areas: civil fines tied to the program, how many under-21 drivers use interlock devices, and whether the bill creates a notification gap between courts and DMV that would allow drivers to avoid longer suspensions.

Russo said the DMV does not handle civil-fine policy and could not recommend new penalty amounts. Lawmakers noted that the current fines have been at their present levels since 02/2003, a point raised during the exchange. On interlock devices, Russo said the DMV has "roughly 900 participants" in the under-21 group and that when the agency last pulled the number it was a "small percentage, very small." He said he had asked IT for updated counts during the hearing but had not yet received them.

Lawmakers pressed technical questions about how suspensions would be applied. Under the bill as read aloud during the hearing, a first offense would trigger an automatic 90-day suspension that could later extend to a 180-day suspension for noncompliance with required programming. Committee members and DMV staff discussed operational complexity if a 90-day suspension automatically lifts before the agency receives notice that a participant failed programming and must serve a longer suspension.

As one operational option, Russo said DMV could leave an initial suspension in place until the agency receives confirmation the required program was completed successfully. "The automatic lifting of the suspension is going to be easy," he said, noting DMV currently uses similar procedures for junior operator cases. But he cautioned that how the system would reapply a longer suspension would depend on whether notifications arrive electronically or are handled manually.

Members also discussed ongoing efforts to improve court-to-DMV notifications. DMV staff described current practice in which completion certificates sometimes arrive by fax and are applied manually to records. Several speakers referenced H44 as a separate bill that attempts to close gaps in notices from family and judicial courts to the DMV; DMV staff said H44 seeks to address similar notification failures but that they would need to review interactions between the two measures to be sure there are no gaps.

Committee members raised a second procedural question about whether multiple suspensions should run concurrently or be compounded; DMV staff said the current system often results in compounding suspensions but that results can vary depending on how cases and pleas are processed in court.

The committee did not take a vote during the session and recessed for a break. Members asked staff to follow up with updated interlock counts and to examine how H105 and H44 would interact with existing judicial notice procedures and the DMV’s case-processing systems.

The hearing resumed after a scheduled break; no formal committee action on H105 was recorded in the provided transcript.