BILL ANALYSIS
SB 938
Page 1
Date of Hearing: June 30, 2010
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
SB 938 (Huff) - As Amended: June 10, 2010
Policy Committee:
TransportationVote:12-0
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable:
SUMMARY
This bill removes special confidentiality protections in DMV
license plate records for certain individuals and resolves
conflicts in existing statutes regarding background checks.
Specifically, the bill:
1)Eliminates the enhanced confidentiality treatment provided to
the spouses and children of peace officers and other public
officials, if those spouses or children have been convicted of
crimes and are on active parole or probation.
2)Specifies that DMV is not responsible for verifying that such
a spouse or child has been convicted of a crime and is on
active parole or probation.
3)Repeals the requirement that the California Highway Patrol
(CHP) utilize the California Law Enforcement
Telecommunications System (CLETS) when conducting background
checks on tow truck driver applicants, and instead requires
the background check to be conducted through the Department of
Justice.
FISCAL EFFECT
According to DMV, the enhanced confidentiality provisions would
result in costs totaling $27 million for the background checks
that would be necessary to establish which of the 1.5 million
individuals covered by enhanced confidentiality have criminal
records.
The bill states that DMV would not be responsible for verifying
SB 938
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the criminal status of spouses and children, but it does not
indicate who would be responsible for such verification. Costs
for background checks would likely fall on state and local
agencies, as employers.
COMMENTS
1)Background . Until 1989, DMV records were generally considered
public records and any person who had a legitimate reason to
seek a home address of a particular person in the DMV files
could obtain it simply by producing the relevant driver's
license number or a license plate number. In 1986,
legislation was enacted creating a list of public officials
whose home addresses were to be kept confidential by the DMV.
Under this legislation, the home addresses of peace officers
and others on the statutory list may only be disclosed to a
court, a law enforcement agency, the BOE, or any governmental
agency legally required to be furnished that information. As a
matter of practice, DMV records for these individuals only
show the individual's employer's name (and no address). Home
addresses may be retrieved only through a time consuming
manual process. Over the years, the number of groups covered
by the enhanced confidentiality statutes has increased.
Currently, there are about 1.5 million individuals covered by
the enhanced confidentiality statutes, consisting of employees
in various public safety fields, plus their spouses and
children.
In response to a stalking and murder case in the 1980s, the
Legislature passed AB 1779 (Roos), Chapter 1213, Statutes of
1989, which made confidential the home addresses of all
individuals with records at the DMV. The level of
confidentiality is similar to that enjoyed by public officials
protected by the 1986 legislation, except that disclosures may
also be made, in limited circumstances, to financial
institutions, insurance companies, attorneys, vehicle
manufacturers, and persons doing statistical research.
2)Purpose . The bill is intended to address a flaw in the
existing statutes providing enhanced confidentiality to
spouses and children of selected law enforcement personnel.
The problem, according to the author, is that when a peace
officer makes a routine traffic stop and a license check turns
up confidential, the officer may incorrectly assume that the
individual in the car is in law enforcement and not a risk to
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safety.
The bill's provision dealing with tow truck drivers and CLETS
is intended to deal with a conflict in state law, whereby
Penal Code statutes require background checks based on
fingerprints and the vehicle code requires background checks
based on CLETS, which is considered less effective for this
purpose.
3)Issue . The problem identified by this bill relating to
enhanced confidentiality is one of many related to the
program. Maintenance of the enhanced confidentiality records
is a manual, labor intensive, process that consumes
considerable time and resources of the DMV. The program has
also resulted in millions of dollars of lost revenues related
to the inability of state and local agencies to identify toll
and parking violators covered by the enhanced confidentiality
statutes. This bill would create additional administrative
burdens on state and local employers.
Since the enactment of AB 1779 eliminated the need for the
separate home address confidentiality protections afforded to
public officials and employees under Vehicle Code sections
1808.2, 1808.4, and 1808.6, a more appropriate course of
action would be to repeal these three outdated sections. Most
persons seeking confidential information no longer look to DMV
records for the data since those records are so carefully
protected and much more easily obtainable via the internet.
DMV is not aware of any instance since the enactment of AB
1779 where DMV home address information has been used for a
criminal purpose.
4)Related legislation . AB 2097 (Miller) requires persons
requesting confidentiality of their Department of Motor
Vehicles (DMV) records to provide a current employment
address, and suspends the statutes of limitations on parking
and toll violations for the time it takes for DMV to provide
the agency the current employment address of those covered by
enhanced confidentiality statutes.
Analysis Prepared by : Brad Williams / APPR. / (916) 319-2081