Full Report (PDF) - Office of the Legislative Auditor

xiiMOTOR VEmCLE DEPUTY REGISTRARS• Minnesota's administrative fees for motor vehicle titles, license platetabs, and driver's license renewal are higher than administrative feesin most other states.The median administrative fee was $2.00 for registration renewal, $2.50 for titles,and $3.00 for driver's license renewals. Fees ranged from $.75 to $5.25 for tabs,from $.75 to $5.50 for titles, and from $1.00 to $7.50 for drivers' licenses. 1DPS duplicatesdata entryperformed bydeputyregistrars.We found that many states make greater use of technology to process motor vehicletransactions than in Minnesota. For example, each year, DPS clerical staffmanually enter into the state's database about 1.5 million title transactions andabout 1 million registration renewals that cannot be electronically scanned. Mostof this data entry duplicates work already perfonned by deputy registrnrs on theirown computers. Many states upload this infonnation electronically from agents totheir central database. We believe that Minnesota could save substantial resourcesby electronically processing this infonnation. In addition, motor vehiclerecords would be updated more quickly. The Department of Public Safety plansto test this approach for registration renewals in 1994 with the deputy registrar inFaribault. It plans to fully implement this approach in about two years.CUSTOMER SERVICEMinnesota's deputy registrars provide reasonably good access to motor vehicleservices for Minnesota residents. There is a deputy registrar in every county andalmost all residents live within 15 miles of a deputy registrar. Compared to otherstates, the number of full-time agents in Minnesota is slightly better than average,taking into account population and square miles.To measure customer waiting times, we made 205 visits to deputy registrars betweenJuly and October 1993. We found that:• Most people received prompt service at deputy registrars, thoughwaiting time varied considerably among deputies.76 percent ofdeputies'customerswaited lessthan 5 minutes.We estimate that about 76 percent of walk-in customers waited less than 5 minutes,7 percent waited 20 minutes or longer, and 2 percent waited 30 minutes orlonger. The longest wait that we observed was 60 minutes.Customers waited an average of only 1.1 minutes at small deputy registrars, butwaited an average of 6.4 minutes at large deputies. Hennepin County's data showthat the average wait at its four service centers was about 15 minutes during thesummer months.We did not find large differences in customer service between public and privatedeputy registrars. Public and private deputies had similar customer waiting times1 Agents from several states perfonned one or more of these services at no cost to their customers.We did not include these states in that specific calculation.