Full Report (PDF) - Office of the Legislative Auditor

xviiiMOTOR VEmCLE DEPUTY REGISTRARSFee StructureWe examined the fee structure for deputy registrars by measuring the transactiontimes for different types of transactions and by reviewing deputy registrar coststudies conducted by a private consultant in three counties. We found that:• Minnesota's fee structure does not reflect the workload differencesamong different types of transactions.The administrative fee for motor vehicle renewals (tabs) is the same as the fee fortitles and drivers' licenses even though tabs take much less time to process than titlesor drivers' licenses. We found that the avernge transaction time was about 2.3minutes for license plate tabs, 6.7 minutes for motor vehicle titles, and 5 minutesfor drivers' licenses. These results also indicate that the lruge gap between the former$1 driver's license fee and the $3.50 motor vehicle fee was not justified onthe basis of cost.Fee studies conducted in three counties indicate that the lruge fee differences betweenboat and snowmobile registrations ($.50) and motor vehicle and driver's licensetransactions ($3.50) are not justified on the basis of cost. In the threecounties, the estimated registration cost for boats and snowmobiles ranged from25 percent lower to 30 percent higher than the avernge cost of motor vehicle anddriver's license transactions. We recommend that:• The Legislature should change the fee structure to more accuratelyreflect the processing time required by different types of transactions.This would mean lower fees for motor vehicle registrations and higher fees for motorvehicle title transfers and watercraft, ATY, and snowmobile registrations.SYSTEM DESIGN: PUBLIC VS. PRIVATENeither publicnor privatedeputies have aclear advantagein customerservice.Overall, we found that neither public nor private deputy registrars have a clear advantagein customer service. Private deputies have slightly better hours, and publicdeputies have slightly lower error rates. Customer waiting times are similar forpublic and private deputies.We found that many private deputy registrars, particularly large deputies, makelarge profits, but this does not necessarily mean that replacing them with publicdeputies would save the taxpayers money. While we found that many public deputyregistrars made money for their city or county, there were many others, particularlysmall deputies, who lost money. If a county or city cannot provide deputyregistrar services at a reasonable cost, private deputies give the public another optionfor providing those services.