DMV Backs Off From Requiring Reservations

After nine months of troubled operations and an unending flood of complaints, the Deukmejian Administration is retreating from its policy of requiring the public to make reservations before visiting Department of Motor Vehicle offices.

Directives being sent to managers of each of the department’s 154 offices will keep the appointment system in effect for those who want it. But service also will be allowed on a first-come, first-served basis, much as the DMV had operated until last August when it turned to the reservation system.

The new policy takes effect immediately, DMV director George E. Meese said Wednesday.

“The thrust will be to modify the appointment system to provide whatever is most convenient to the public,” said Leonard Bleier, the department’s legislative liaison officer.

Bleier added that the present system is “getting better every day” but that the department decided to institute the new “dual system” to “give the public the best of both worlds.”

When it was initiated after more than six years of planning, the reservation system was billed as a noble experiment that would end bureaucratic runarounds and the frustratingly long lines that confronted motorists daily at most DMV field offices.

But it only made matters worse--more bungling, longer lines and shortened tempers.

Official Has Doubts

Assemblyman Byron Sher (D-Palo Alto), who earlier this month introduced a bill that would have forced the department to abandon the reservation system in its entirety, said he has serious doubts that the situation is improving.

“They wouldn’t be changing the policy now if they had this system in perfect shape,” Sher said. “There is still a substantial backlog of cases of people who just abandoned the system and just stopped trying (to reach the DMV). I think they recognized that and that’s why they are going to this optional system.”

DMV’s decision to implement the reservation system came after years of struggling with its reputation as one of the state’s most difficult agencies to deal with. Waits at offices routinely lasted hours and the length of lines was legendary.

The reservation policy, which began as the department was in the midst of a conversion to computers, was to have ended the problems by allowing appointments only to the extent that personnel were available to handle the business.

Phone Problems

However, telephone equipment was inadequate and in many cases even information operators could not find the proper telephone numbers. Frustrated by their inability to get through, many people began showing up in person, where they were routinely turned away because they lacked reservations.

As a result, the backlog of business has ballooned to an estimated 200,000 transactions, according to DMV officials.

“It was a horrendous problem,” said Sher, who added that his district office continues to receive at least 20 calls from irate constituents each week.

In late March, top DMV officials were reporting that they were well on the way to ironing out problems with the system and that it should be working as planned within 90 days.

But in a March 11 memo to Kirk West, Gov. George Deukmejian’s secretary of business and transportation, DMV officials were conceding that the problems had escalated to serious proportions.

Frustrated Motorists

The memo, which argued for an additional $8 million to buy better equipment and add personnel, said the public was being forced to wait more than a week on the average for an appointment and that some frustrated motorists are simply “giving up the struggle” and allowing their car registrations and driver’s licenses to expire.

The backlog, the memo said, is causing the state to fall behind in collecting an estimated $16 million in revenue. It also suggested that public safety was being endangered by delays in examination and counseling of high-risk drivers.

Asked about those claims Wednesday, Bleier said: “It was an unfortunately worded memo that probably overstated some of the actual facts.” The analysis, he said, did not take into account the number of people who may have been frustrated by the earlier system and “turned on their heels and walked out.”

“There have been complaints, sure,” Bleier added. “We’ve gone through the most major change in the department’s history. That is what most of the media have lost sight of.”