BILL ANALYSIS Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair 2097 (Miller) Hearing Date: 08/02/2010 Amended: 05/28/2010 Consultant: Mark McKenzie Policy Vote: T&H 9-0 _________________________________________________________________ ____ BILL SUMMARY: AB 2097 would require specified persons who have requested confidentiality of their home address in Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records to provide DMV with a current employment address, and makes the following changes to improve the collections of traffic, parking, and toll road violations: Require DMV to update the form to request address confidentiality to include the requirement for providing a current employment address. Requires persons who have requested address confidentiality to notify DMV within 10 days of changes to an employment address. Require the human resources offices to provide the updated forms to all new applicants and existing enrollees on or after January 1, 2011, and forward all completed and updated forms to DMV's Confidential Records Unit by April 1, 2012. Authorizes a notice of traffic, parking, or toll road violation to be sent to the person's employment address for purposes of serving a notice to appear. Require DMV to refuse renewal of a vehicle registration if a person qualifying for address confidentiality receives a notice of violation at his or her workplace and has unpaid parking or traffic citation penalties. _________________________________________________________________ ____ Fiscal Impact (in thousands) Major Provisions 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 Fund DMV record updates significant costs, likely in the range of Special* $1,000 - $3,000 to manually update DMV records by 2012 to reflect employer addresses CHP address reporting unknown, potentially significant costs toSpecial* process updated forms with employees ____________ * Motor Vehicle Account _________________________________________________________________ ____ STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File. Existing law provides for certain persons to request that their home address in DMV records be kept confidential. This provision applies to certain public officials, federal, state, and county employees, and public safety personnel, as specified. Confidential addresses may only be disclosed to the courts, a law enforcement agency, the Board of Equalization, and certain attorneys and government agencies. Requests for address confidentiality are made through the qualifying employer and forwarded to DMV, who keeps hard copies of the records, which makes retrieval a time consuming manual process. DMV indicates that it currently keeps about 1.5 million records confidential through this program. Page 2 AB 2097 (Miller) The current confidentiality process has kept many local agencies from collecting on delinquent parking, traffic, and toll violations. Although law enforcement and local governments can request that confidential addresses be unmasked for purposes of enforcing violations, the process is time consuming. Also, many local governments are contracting with private entities for the collection of traffic fines and these entities do not have access to confidential DMV records. This bill is intended to allow for a process of enhanced collections while protecting the home address of persons eligible for confidentiality. DMV indicates that the bill places a significant burden on the department to obtain and process employment address information for the 1.5 million records it currently has on hand. Since the deadline for submitting employment information is not until April of 2012, it is assumed that the costs can be spread over two fiscal years, but most of the revised applications are likely to be submitted to DMV in 2011-12. DMV indicates that the total costs are likely in the range of $1 - $3 million. Costs to update the confidentiality request form are minor and absorbable. CHP, as a large public safety employer whose officers are eligible for address confidentiality, would also have significant costs to process applications for its 11,000 employees and forward updated address information to DMV. Actual costs are unknown and would depend upon the number of employees seeking confidentiality. This bill could also result in increased revenue collections of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to local agencies related to increased collections on parking, traffic, and toll road violations.