BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE TRANSPORTATION & HOUSING COMMITTEE BILL NO: sb 1317
SENATOR MARK DESAULNIER, CHAIRMAN AUTHOR: kehoe
VERSION:
3/27/2012
Analysis by: Eric Thronson FISCAL: yes
Hearing date: April 24, 2012
SUBJECT:
Traffic violator schools
DESCRIPTION:
This bill clarifies what traffic violator school information the
Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) makes available and shifts
some of DMV's administrative costs from the schools to the
violators.
ANALYSIS:
Existing law defines a traffic violator school (TVS) as a
business which provides traffic safety instruction, such as
classroom defensive-driver concepts, for traffic law violators
referred by the courts or people who elect to attend to improve
their own skills. The TVS program includes classroom-based
programs as well as home study programs, which may offer
instruction through a variety of non-classroom means (e.g.,
internet, textbook, video, and CD ROM). Attending a TVS
essentially allows a traffic violator to pay a one-time fee to
avoid receiving a point against his or her driving record, which
reduces future car insurance costs, as well as the chance of DMV
suspending or revoking the violator's driving privileges.
In an effort to make the TVS program more effective and uniform
across instructional modalities, AB 2499 (Portantino), Chapter
599, Statutes of 2010, made a number of changes to the program,
including directing DMV to administer it and licenses the
schools as of September 2011. In addition, AB 2499 changed
specific implementing details pertaining to the program, such as
how DMV disseminates information about these schools and how
schools notify courts of a violator's successful course
completion. Finally, AB 2499 required DMV to charge fees to the
schools sufficient to cover its actual cost to administer the
TVS program. Existing law allows DMV to charge violators only a
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fee to cover the cost of routine monitoring of instruction.
This bill makes a number of changes to existing law intended to
clarify what information the DMV is providing on each TVS, as
well as to shift some of DMV's administrative costs from the
schools to the violators. Specifically, this bill:
Specifies what information should be made available on
the list of licensed traffic violator schools provided on
the DMV website and that the list should be rotated each
time the list is accessed instead of randomized daily.
Also, this bill requires the court or court representatives
to provide a hard copy of the list with the same details.
Allows a classroom-based TVS to provide a hard copy
certificate of completion, which students can present to
the court as proof of completion, instead of posting this
information to a DMV web database.
Prohibits DMV from requiring any TVS to process
paper-based evaluations of course instruction by students.
Expands DMV costs to be defrayed by the fee assessed
against traffic violators to include providing classroom
course completion certificates and renewing current
classroom locations.
COMMENTS:
1.Purpose . This bill seeks to improve DMV's implementation of
some elements of 2010's
AB 2499. According to the author, AB 2499 failed to provide
TVSs with needed administrative flexibility and imposed new
fees on these schools in order to provide sufficient funds for
DMV to administer the TVS program. In addition, the author
contends that information provided by DMV and the courts
regarding TVS locations remains woefully inadequate. The
author states that these changes have left the classroom-based
schools unable to financially sustain themselves.
Proponents argue that this bill resolves two important issues
by directing DMV to make course completion certificates once
again available to classroom-based schools. Before
AB 2499, DMV provided classroom-based schools with
certificates of completion which students submitted to the
courts as proof of attendance and completion. Existing law
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requires schools to begin inputting each student's information
into an online database that courts can access to verify
course completion. Proponents contend that one benefit of
returning to paper certificates is that the DMV can again
charge violators for the certificates, effectively reducing
the cost born by the classroom-based schools. The second
benefit of eliminating the online database for the
classroom-based schools is that it reduces the potential
liability concerns for any mistakes made inputting the data.
2.TVS information provided by DMV . Existing law requires DMV to
provide a list of licensed traffic violator schools, by
modality, on its website. Due to concerns expressed by some
TVS operators, DMV, Judicial Council, and some stakeholders
have been meeting since January to address the way the TVS
information is being displayed on the DMV's website.
According to DMV, all issues raised concerning the content on
the website that can be addressed will be resolved by
mid-April. If enacted, this bill will essentially codify
DMV's current practice outside the following two challenges:
1) Because TVSs do not provide on their licensing record the
judicial district in which they operate, DMV is presently
unable to add this field to the database as mandated in this
bill; and 2) DMV points out that rotating the list instead of
randomizing the order of schools could open up the system to
manipulation that could advantage one particular establishment
over another. The committee may consider removing these
elements from the bill in order to address DMV's
implementation challenges.
3.Course completion certificates vs. the online database . As
mentioned previously, this bill directs DMV to make paper
course completion certificates once again available to
classroom-based schools instead of requiring instructors to
input student information into an online database. It is
unclear why inputting student data into a database is
increasing the workload of instructors or how the use of an
online database increases liability issues for the schools.
The instructors manually write onto the paper certificates all
the information they enter into the database, so the database
entry does not seem to introduce any additional workload. In
addition, the schools' liability risk is similar to the paper
certificates with the database process, because written
mistakes can be made as easily as mistakes keyed into a
database. DMV indicates it has no knowledge of a case in
which schools were held liable for any such mistakes in the
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past.
4.Online database may reduce fraud . The online database
established by AB 2499 requires course instructors to log in
when entering course completion information, which introduces
accountability to the TVS process and makes fraudulent
behavior much easier to identify and prosecute. On the other
hand, paper completion certificates can be sold, replicated,
or stolen, and it is very difficult to track down and
prosecute perpetrators of such illegal actions. Nevertheless,
fraud cases have been pursued when possible. For example,
since 2006, Los Angeles County has received 57 case referrals
that have led to 19 arrests and convictions. Due to the
concerns about fraudulent use of paper completion
certificates, the committee may wish to amend the bill to
remove the provisions requiring DMV to reinstate the old
process.
5.How to fairly fund DMV's administrative costs . AB 2499
required DMV to seek full cost recovery for its administration
of the TVS program, which DMV was not doing beforehand. The
law specifies what costs the fee collected by the courts from
each traffic violator can defray. Legislative Counsel has
published an opinion that existing law does not allow DMV to
charge violators for administrative costs, except for the cost
of routine monitoring of instruction. Because DMV is required
to recover its full costs, it has had to increase the fees on
the schools to cover the program costs.
This bill shifts two portions of DMV's costs from the
classroom-based schools to each violator by expanding the
administrative costs that can be defrayed by the violator's
court fees. The first cost shifted is the cost of providing
course completion certificates, which is discussed in a
previous comment. The second cost shifted by this bill is for
DMV's annual classroom location approval. Each
classroom-based school is required annually to seek approval
of classroom locations from DMV, and DMV has increased the fee
to do so from $50 to $100 in order to help cover the
administrative costs of the TVS program. This bill eliminates
the classroom location renewal fee in lieu of funding from
higher fees on every violator who takes advantage of the TVS
program.
Proponents of the bill indicate that classroom-based schools
have been unduly burdened by recent fee increases. While the
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cost shifts contained in this bill could provide some relief
for these schools, there may be more direct ways to accomplish
the author's aim. For example, the proponents suggest the
classroom-based schools could manage the recently increased
licensing costs if the classroom location fee was reduced back
to $50. In addition, DMV indicates that cost estimates for
administering the TVS program are currently unclear due to the
potential savings of completing implementation of AB 2499
provisions. A fee reduction would have a relatively minor
impact on the total funding of the program, and future savings
could pay for this reduction without affecting DMV's
administration. If not, a minor increase of the violator fine
of less than one dollar would cover any deficit caused by
reducing the annual classroom renewal fee. In order to
address the immediate burden placed on classroom-based schools
in a more direct way, the committee may wish to amend the bill
in the following ways: 1) Amend the bill to remove the fee
shifts currently proposed; 2) Reduce the classroom location
fee to $50 per location; and
3) Permit DMV to increase violator charges if necessary to
defray administrative costs.
6.Is this bill subsidizing low-income violators ? According to
the Public Policy Institute of California, roughly 24 percent
of Californians have no internet access at home. Supporters
of this bill argue that, because some segment of Californians
does not have internet access at home, it is imperative for
the state to subsidize classroom-based schools in order to
ensure access to the TVS program for everyone. This bill
accomplishes this by shifting costs from the classroom-based
schools to every violator participating in the TVS program.
It is not clear, however, that by subsidizing classroom-based
schools the state is subsidizing low-income Californians.
While there may be a correlation between persons of low income
and lack of internet access in the home, not all low-income
households are without internet access nor are all households
without internet access low-income. Likewise, it is not clear
that a disproportionate percentage of attendees of
classroom-based schools are violators without internet access
nor low-income. As a result, this bill requires all violators
to subsidize not just low-income Californians without internet
access but any violator who chooses to attend a
classroom-based TVS. Further, because the bill does not
require the savings from reduced fees on classroom-based
schools to be passed on to attendees, it appears it could be
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providing a subsidy to the classroom-based school operators
and not to any TVS program attendees.
POSITIONS: (Communicated to the committee before noon on
Wednesday, April 18,
2012.)
SUPPORT: California Traffic School Association, Inc.
Traffic Safety Consultants, Inc.
Fun-N-Cheap Comedy Traffic School
Never Speed Again Comedy Traffic Schools
Gay Community Traffic School
10 individual traffic violator school instructors
OPPOSED: None received.