Full Report (PDF) - Office of the Legislative Auditor

48MOTOR VEmCLE DEPUTY REGISTRARSHennepin County processed about 8,500 transactions per employee, about 30 percentfewer than other huge deputies. One reason that it processed fewer transactionsper employee is that time-consuming transactions (drivers' licenses, titletransactions, and other long applications) made up a larger percentage (53 percent)of its deputy registrar transactions than they did for other large deputies (40 percent).Ifwe adjusted Hennepin County's transactions by assuming that onedriver's license transaction takes as long as two registration renewal transactions,Hennepin County's transactions per employee would be about 20 percent lowerthan other large deputies.According to Hennepin County officials, another reason that it processes fewertransactions per employee is that it provides a wide variety of services at eachservice center, including marriage licenses, passports, birth and death certificates,voter registrations, real estate tax. payments, recordings, notarizations, and fish andgame licenses. Our cost and employee figures include only staff time attributableto deputy registrar services, based on the David Griffith study.6 Nevertheless, thegreater complexity of Hennepin County's service centers may require employeesto have more training and supervision. For example, Hennepin County crosstrainseach employee to handle each type oftransaction.Income of Public Deputy RegistrarsTable 3.3 summarizes the estimated income earned by deputy registrars underboth the 1992 fee structure and the current fee structure. The income earned underthe current fee structure is the income that they would have earned in 1992 had thecurrent driver's license fee been in effect. We found:In 1992, mostof the 44smallest publi~.deputies lostmoney, butmost of the 34largest publicdeputies mademoney.• In 1992, many public deputy registrars lost money, particularlydeputies with fewer than 24,000 transactions per year. The recentdriver's license fee increase will increase revenues for most publicdeputies, though many small deputies will continue to lose money.Minnesota has 44 public deputy registrars that process fewer than 24,000 transactionsper year. In our sample, 76 percent of these small and medium-small deputyregistrars (16 out of 21) lost money in 1992. Overall, we estimate that these 44deputy registrars lost about $325,000 in 1992.Under the current fee schedule, 67 percent of these small and medium-small deputyregistrars in our sample (14 out of 21) would have lost money. We estimatethat if the $3.50 driver's license fee had been in effect, the total loss for these 44deputies would have been about $140,000 instead of $325,000.Minnesota had 35 single-office public deputy registrars that processed more than24,000 transactions per year. Thirty-three percent (7 out of21) of these mediumlargeand large deputies in our sample had a loss in 1992. We estimate that these35 deputies, taken together, made about $315,000 in 1992.6 Hennepin County's service center department had 95.1 full-time employees in 1992. Accordingto the David Griffith analySis, about 56 percent of staff time was attributable to deputy registrar transactions.