BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SB 1317
Page 1
Date of Hearing: August 8, 2012
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Felipe Fuentes, Chair
SB 1317 (Kehoe) - As Amended: August 6, 2012
Policy Committee:
TransportationVote:9-4
Urgency: No State Mandated Local Program:
No Reimbursable: No
SUMMARY
This bill temporarily freezes or reduces fees for traffic
violator school (TVS) licensing, location and curricula
approval, and examination administration. Specifically, this
bill:
1)Requires the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), until January
1, 2015, to set fees for the following at an amount equal to
fee amounts established by the DMV for the 2011-12 fiscal
year: issuing TVS-related licenses, approving TVS branch
office or classroom locations, approving curricula, and
administering exams.
2)Requires DMV to set the fee for renewal of an approved current
classroom branch location at $50 per location.
3)Requires a court-assessed fee on traffic violators who attends
TVS to include an amount determined by DMV to be sufficient to
defray the costs to DMV to administer the TVS program, minus
the costs defrayed by the fee revenue described above.
FISCAL EFFECT
1)One-time costs in the low tens of thousands of dollars to DMV
to amend regulations to adjust the court-collected
administrative fee, currently set at $3 (special fund).
2)Loss of revenue of approximately $170,000 to DMV during the
2013 calendar year (special fund). This loss occurs because
it will take DMV approximately a year to establish the new
amount of the administrative fee by regulation, during which
SB 1317
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time DMV will be unable to make up the revenue lost from the
lower classroom branch location fee required by this bill.
COMMENTS
1)Rationale . The author intends this bill to provide temporary
relief to TVS operators, who, according to the author, are
unable to financially support the administrative fees imposed
by DMV in response to recently enacted legislation that
substantially altered administration of the TVS program. The
author expresses hope that TVS operators will identify and
implement changes to their business practices during the
relief period provided by this bill that will allow them to
continue to operate.
2)Background. 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. 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 volume of potential court cases.
AB 2499 (Chapter 599, Statutes of 2010 (Portantino))
consolidates the licensing of all TVSs-whether
brick-and-mortar or home study assisted by books, CDs,
websites, or other means-under the authority of DMV and treats
a traffic violation as a conviction, rather than as a
dismissal, if the person attends a TVS. Significant to this
bill, AB 2499 deleted the statutory amount of fees for the
licensing of TVSs, operators, and instructions, as well as the
fees DMV charges traffic violator schools for course
completion certificates. Instead, AB 2499 authorizes DMV to
charge fees, in amounts established by DMV through regulation
and sufficient to cover DMV's administrative costs, for the
following activities:
a) Issuance of an original, renewal, or duplicate license
to a TVS owner, operator, instructor, or for a branch or
classroom location.
b) Transfer of an operator or instructor license from one
TVS to another.
c) Approval of a curriculum.
d) Administration of exams for operators and instructors.
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AB 2499 also requires the courts to assess a fee, in an amount
determined by DMV, against each violator who elects to attend
a TVS to cover DMV's costs of monitoring TVS instruction.
Acting on the authority provided by AB 2499, DMV adopted
regulations in 2011 that established the following schedule of
fees, set at amounts to cover DMV's administrative costs, as
follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------
|Application Fees |
---------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|License Type | Original or | Renewal | Modification | Transfer | Duplicate |
| | Reinstatement | | | | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|---------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+---------|
|Classroom| $100| $100| $100| N.A.| $15|
| | | | | | |
|---------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+---------|
|Instructo| $50| $50| $25| $25| $15|
|r | | | | | |
|---------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+---------|
|Branch | $100| $100| $100| N.A.| $15|
|Office | | | | | |
|---------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+---------|
|Operator | $100| $75| $50| $50| $15|
--------------------------------------------------------------
|Owner | $200| $100| $100| N.A.| $15|
|---------+-----------+---------+----------+---------+---------|
|Written | $16| $16| N.A.| N.A.|N.A. |
|Exam | | | | | |
--------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
|Curriculum Fees |
---------------------------------------------------------------
|------------------------------------------+---------+----------|
|Approval Requested for Lesson Plans |Original | Revised |
|------------------------------------------+---------+----------|
|Classroom | $475| $250|
|------------------------------------------+---------+----------|
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|Home Study/Internet | $800| $250|
|------------------------------------------+---------+----------|
|Validation of authority to use an | $25|N.A. |
|approved lesson plan | | |
---------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, DMV established a $3 administrative fee,
collected by the courts from each traffic violator referred to
TVS, to cover DMV's TVS monitoring costs.
These fee amounts represent the first time TVS fees had been
increased in decades. Many TVS operators have found it
difficult to financially support the new fees.
This bill would freeze, until 2015, the fee amounts listed
above at their current level, with two exceptions. First, the
TVS branch location license renewal fee would be rolled back
to $50 during this period. Second, DMV would be authorized to
set the court-collected administration fee at an amount
sufficient to defray the department's TVS program
administrative costs, minus the costs defrayed by other
program fees. In effect, the bill temporarily requires
traffic violators attending TVS, who will pay an increased
court-collected administrative fee, to subsidize the cost of
TVS operators, who will pay a reduced branch location renewal
fee.
3)Support. This bill is supported by the California Traffic
School Association, Inc., and other TVS businesses and related
organizations.
4)Opposition. The bill is opposed by the American Safety
Council and others, who contend DMV's TVS program should be
fully supported by TVS operators.
Analysis Prepared by : Jay Dickenson / APPR. / (916) 319-2081