Senate Transportation reviews DMV "miscellaneous" bill with technical fixes, fee clarifications and administrative updates

The Senate Transportation Committee heard a section-by-section presentation Wednesday on a Department of Motor Vehicles "miscellaneous" bill that would make a range of technical corrections, expand some customer options and clarify fee exemptions.

Andrew Collier, commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles, told the committee the proposal chiefly cleans up statutory language and modernizes administrative practice. "We are clarifying the term budget car to include electric vehicle and electric hybrid vehicles," Collier said, and several other changes are intended to reflect current DMV practice or to adopt national standards.

The bill covers many small, discrete changes that the DMV argued are noncontroversial but collectively affect core services. Key items discussed include switching the statutory label "driver privilege card" to "non–REAL ID"; allowing non‑driver identification cards to include an anatomical‑gift (organ‑donor) option; enabling customers to print registration certificates online rather than pay a $20 replacement fee; and updating valuation references from NADA to JD Power.

Why it matters: the measure touches routine interactions Vermonters have with the DMV (IDs, registration, refunds and records requests) and would codify recent administrative practices while addressing questions that have arisen in enforcement and customer service.

Most substantive policy clarifications…