BILL ANALYSIS AB 2499 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 2499 (Portantino and Gilmore) As Amended August 5, 2010 Majority vote ----------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |64-10|(June 1, 2010) |SENATE: |22-8 |(August 18, | | | | | | |2010) | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Original Committee Reference: TRANS . SUMMARY : Brings home study traffic violator schools (TVSs) under the purview of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The Senate amendments : 1)Add legislative findings regarding the need to provide uniform statewide regulation of TVSs. 2)Require court clerks to notify DMV that a traffic violator's conviction is to be held confidential if the violator completes a TVS program. 3)Require DMV to hold the first such conviction in an 18-month period confidential and prohibits it from assessing a violation point unless the violator holds a commercial license, the violation took place in a commercial vehicle, or the violation carries more than one point. 4)Allow a TVS owner to operate that TVS if his or her license includes an owner/operator designation. 5)Allow operators to operate more than one TVS if those TVSs have common ownership and the same business address. 6)Require a TVS operator to complete a four hour educational program and provide certification from the owner that he or she has the necessary knowledge to perform an operator's duties. 7)Require any hard copy list of TVSs provided to traffic violators to be a current listing obtained from DMV. 8)Allow court assistance programs (CAPs), which are renamed AB 2499 Page 2 "traffic assistance programs" (TAPs), to contract with DMV in order to assist with TVS oversight activities. 9)Allow TAP services to include printing and providing to the court and traffic violators hard copy county-specific lists printed from DMV's Internet Web site, administratively assisting traffic violators, and any other lawful activity relating to the administration of the court's traffic infraction caseload. 10) Allow courts to charge traffic violators a fee to defray the costs incurred by a TAP for traffic case administration services provided to the court. 11) Allow courts to delegate collection of the fee to the TAP. Fees must be approved and regulated by the court and may not exceed the actual costs incurred by the court assistance program for authorized activities. 12) Repeal the requirement for traffic violators to submit TVS completion certificates to the court. 13) Allow, until April 1, 2012, courts to restrict referrals to those TVSs or licensed driving schools that are under contract with the court or with the county in those counties in which, prior to January 1, 1985, one or more individual courts, or the county acting on behalf of one or more individual courts, contracted for the provision of traffic safety instructional services to traffic violators referred by the court pursuant to a pretrial diversion program. 14) Allow these counties to continue to provide those programs in accordance with the provisions of current and future contracts as may be amended and approved by the individual courts within those counties and exempt them from state regulations relative to maximum classroom attendance. 15) Require DMV to adopt regulations necessary for implementing this bill no later than September 1, 2011. 16) Clarify that traffic violations can be held confidential as a result of a violator completing a TVS course of instruction, rather than by merely attending that course. 17) Require the hard copy list of licensed TVSs provided by a AB 2499 Page 3 court or TAP to be as current as practicable, but in no event to be distributed with a date stamp that is more than 60 days old. 18) Require TVSs to submit updated course completion information to DMV for DMV's tracking purposes, within three business days, rather than within 72 hours. EXISTING LAW : 1)Allows a court to order any person convicted of a traffic violation to attend a TVS. 2)Allows a court, in lieu of adjudicating a traffic offense, to order a person to attend a TVS with the consent of that person. 3)Allows a court to grant a continuance and dismiss an action for violation of any statute related to the safe operation of a vehicle in consideration for attendance at a TVS or any other court-approved program of driving instruction. 4)Requires DMV to license TVSs and prohibits persons from owning or operating TVSs without a DMV license. 5)Establishes various license requirements for TVSs, including the maintenance of a place of business, the procurement of a bond, and having a lesson plan approved by DMV with a prescribed number of minutes of instruction. 6)Requires DMV to license TVS operators and prescribes minimum qualifications for licensed operators including passage of a DMV examination and having 500 hours experience providing in-class instruction in driver training and education. AS PASSED BY THE ASSEMBLY , this bill is significantly similar to the version passed by the Senate. FISCAL EFFECT : According to the Senate Appropriations Committee analysis, DMV reports that its costs to set up a Web-based database to track enrollment and completion of TVS programs by participants would be in the range of $40,000. Initial DMV costs associated with developing new regulations for the licensing and monitoring of TVS programs would be minor. All ongoing licensing and monitoring of the program, estimated at AB 2499 Page 4 over $3 million annually, would be fully offset by licensing fees and fees paid by participants when a court approves adjudication of a violation by completing a TVS program. COMMENTS : Under existing law, motorists cited for certain traffic violations may, at the option of the court, be ordered to attend TVS as part of their sentence or be offered to have the charges dismissed in consideration for attending TVS. There are reportedly 400 licensed TVSs and unlicensed 200 home study schools currently operating in the state. It is estimated that about one million persons, or one fourth of all minor traffic offenders, take a TVS class annually. The TVS option assists the operation of the courts by significantly reducing the sheer volume of potential court cases. DMV licenses all classroom TVSs, plus their owner-operators, and instructors. In addition, DMV establishes course curricula, provides completion certificates, conducts monitoring activities, and performs other related responsibilities. Home study courses, on the other hand, are approved by individual courts on a court-by-court basis. Consequently, for these courses, there are no consistent standards for curriculum content, duration of course, or verification of the identity of the student. This bill is the latest in a long series of attempts to bring all segments of the TVS industry under the direction of DMV. The issue of providing a uniform set of standards for traffic school operations has tended to pit the "brick-and-mortar," or classroom, segment of the industry against the "home study" (i.e., mostly Internet, but also video, and correspondence) segment of the industry. Other interested parties, each with their own preferences and points of view, include the courts, the CAPs, and DMV itself. As noted below, a number of attempts to resolve this issue have been unsuccessful, with numerous bills failing to clear the Legislature and one having been vetoed by the Governor. Most recently, the Legislature directed DMV to recommend a comprehensive plan for licensing all TVS instructional programs. This bill is intended to implement the DMV recommendation that were developed in response to that mandate. The DMV report laid out a far-reaching plan for licensing all segments of the TVS industry, transitioning the court-approved AB 2499 Page 5 programs to this new licensing scheme, and implementing a fee schedule that would support these licensing and oversight activities. It also recommended that the process for dismissing traffic violations be re-structured to prevent high-risk drivers from completing traffic safety instruction multiple times to avoid convictions, that all complaints concerning the TVS program be submitted directly to the department and not be submitted or processed by any other entity, and that, while DMV should be responsible for annual post-licensing review of the business, the routine monitoring of the TVS courses could be "outsourced" (i.e., by the use of CAPs, as is currently done by the courts). On this last point, the report states, "The department recognizes and appreciates the services provided by CAPs, which have assumed a significant role in monitoring classroom and home-study programs. For example, the California Traffic Safety Institute has 60 course monitors working in 25 counties every day. This means that nearly 25% of the TVS providers operating within those judicial districts are monitored daily." It also states, "The department recommends that the routine monitoring of the TVS courses be performed by department employees and third parties, similar to the function provided under today's system by CAPs." The classroom segment of the industry, which opposes this bill, claims that this bill is unworkable as DMV has nowhere near the resources to oversee this large of an operation. The classroom operators contend that, "There is no demonstrated need to authorize DMV to regulate home study traffic violator programs on a statewide basis. Only home study programs will profit which will force more classroom schools out of business. The current system is not broken and is not in need of major surgery. DMV has not demonstrated over the years that it can effectively regulate the classroom industry. Based on past experience, DMV cannot effectively regulate the hundreds of existing home study programs, hundreds of new home study school applications that will result from the enactment of AB 2499." Classroom operators also object to the bill's reliance on online lists of TVSs rather than the current paper list that is distributed by DMV. "The proposal in AB 2499 to only make the Classroom Location List available to the traffic violator electronically via DMV's website, is strongly opposed. It is discriminatory! It discriminates against all California drivers who do not have, or use, the internet. This one change alone AB 2499 Page 6 will disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of traffic violators, including 10.9 million Californians who do not go online." Nevertheless, this bill represents a major step forward in enacting a long-sought regulatory scheme to bring some parity and consistency to a process that impacts so many drivers and holds the potential, if as yet unrealized, to positively affect driver behavior. Speaking on behalf of the courts, which currently (and reluctantly) oversee home study courses, the Judicial Council states, "The bill effectively implements the goals the Judicial Council supported in 2007 of ensuring meaningful statewide regulation of an industry, and relieving the judicial branch of its well-intended, but misplaced, role in attempting to ensure quality TVS programs for court users in the absence of statewide regulation. It is critical to maintain the distinction between executive branch and judicial branch function. AB 2499 would properly place the regulation of the TVS industry with the executive branch. AB 2499 brings consistency to the TVS licensing requirements, while giving DMV the ability to ensure that all components of the TVS process are designed to improve traffic safety in California." Similarly, the National Association of Driving Safety Educators, representing home study providers, states, "There is simply no public policy reason why providers of traffic violator education should be regulated based upon the modality of the instruction they offer. Licensing and regulation is properly an executive branch function which should be performed by DMV, not by 58 different Superior Courts. In a time of extreme pressure on court budgets, there is a compelling need to relieve courts of duties more properly performed by the executive branch, so that courts can focus on core duties. Consolidating regulation in the DMV will eliminate the current hodge-podge of rules applied to traffic violator schools by the various courts. Although our client companies may well pay more for regulation under AB 2499, we are in strong support of the measure because we will have one regulator, with one set of rules, and be relieved of the burden of seeking approval to operate on a court-by-court basis, 58 times." There seems to be consensus, other than from the classroom segment of the industry and some CAPs who fear that DMV may not contract for their services, that it is time to bring all TVS AB 2499 Page 7 activities under the purview of DMV. Inasmuch as this bill builds on the efforts of the vetoed AB 2377 (Longville) of 2004, but also incorporates the recommendations contained in DMV's report, it would appear to have the best chance of any of the recent attempts at TVS reform to both pass legislative review and obtain a Governor's signature. Legislative history: This bill is a followup to AB 758 (Plescia and Portantino) Chapter 396, Statutes of 2007. The introduced version of AB 758 would have required DMV to license home study TVSs. When consensus could not be achieved on a means of accomplishing that goal, the bill more modestly required DMV to recommend to the Legislature a comprehensive plan for licensing all TVS instructional programs. In that same session, Mr. Portantino carried AB 1099, which would have restructured the governance of TVSs. AB 1099 died on Suspense in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. Previously, AB 1932 (Benoit) of 2006, offered a comprehensive scheme for the DMV regulation of home study TVSs. AB 1932 also died on Suspense in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. AB 1932 was largely a reintroduction of AB 2377 (Longville), which was vetoed by the Governor in 2004. The Governor's veto message said, in part: "This bill is another example of expanding state bureaucracy without demonstrating a need. It is a waste of taxpayer money to require the Department of Motor Vehicles to expend significant funds to provide for licensing of traffic violator schools that are currently approved at the local level by the courts." AB 2377 was, in turn, a follow-up to AB 435 (Matthews), introduced in 2003 and AB 546 (Cohn), introduced in 2001. AB 435 and AB 546 were ultimately unsuccessful due to the inability of the affected parties to come to a comprehensive agreement. The long and contentious history of this issue had, in fact, led the then-chair of the Senate Transportation Committee to state that his committee would not hear any TVS-related legislation that did not represent a consensus. In that context, long-term discussions between classroom TVSs, home study TVSs, court assistance programs (CAPs), court clerks, DMV, and legislative staff did manage to achieve consensus on one facet of the TVS issue, the oversight of TVSs by DMV and CAPs. That consensus was embodied in AB 1479 (Chu), Chapter 518, Statutes of 2003. Senator Runner introduced a spot bill earlier in this session, AB 2499 Page 8 SB 210, that might have served as a vehicle for TVS reform. An inability to achieve consensus among that various parties reportedly led the senator to abandon that effort. Analysis Prepared by : Howard Posner / TRANS. / (916) 319-2093 FN: 0005851