Publication: San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking $168 million to hire more than 1,100 new employees at the California Department of Motor Vehicles and make other changes to reduce long wait times at DMV offices.
The request, made by his administration Friday to the chairs of the legislative budget committees, came two days after a state audit concluded that a “reactive culture” at the DMV was to blame for poor customer service and the faulty rollout of a new identification card last year.
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Assemblyman Phil Ting, the San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee, said he agrees that the DMV needs more resources to fix its problems.
“But at this point, I don’t have confidence in the department or the leadership team that they know how to spend the money properly,” he said.
Ting pointed to promises from DMV officials last year that they would use tablets to assist people while they waited in line and adopt a texting notification system so people could leave and return when their number was called. The audit found that both programs had been sparingly implemented.