Blunders in the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) new software computer program have led to errors in addresses and tax town codes for registered vehicles throughout the state, the state’s top assessors say.
The latest DMV debacle may well affect the ability of town and city assessors to properly complete grand (or tax) lists on time as the budget season approaches.
This motor vehicle fiasco comes a month after DMV Commissioner Andres Ayala Jr. informed Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Jan. 19 he would resign his post at the end of the week. As it turns out, Ayala was apparently briefed about the motor vehicle debacle when he met with John Rainaldi, president of the Connecticut Association of Assessing Officers and other assessors, on Jan. 20. That was the day he formally resigned.
Branford Tax Assessor Barbara Neal outlined the motor vehicle errors associated with the new DMV software conversion program in a Jan. 29 letter to First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove, Finance Director Jim Finch, and Board of Finance Chairman Joseph Mooney. She also submitted the town’s grand 2015 net Grand List. The letter, along with other documents, is part of the grand list filing.
“Branford has isolated 1,069 vehicles with out-of-town addresses,” she said in her letter. None of them has a resident location in Branford. “It is possible these vehicles belong to other towns, but we were told at this point in time not to transfer any of these vehicles, delete any vehicles, or add any vehicles,” she wrote. The value of the motor vehicles is equal to $11,989,875 in net assessments, she said.
DMV & Assessors Meet
Towns across the state are trying to figure out what their next steps will be. Rainaldi wants the DMV to take the lead. Bill Seymour, a spokesman for the DMV told the Eagle this afternoon that the DMV is going just that.
“The DMV is working with the assessors’ association to remedy any outstanding issues and have them resolved before tax bills are issued,” he said. “Their vendors and our vendors are working together to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.” There is no target date as yet but he said both conference calls and as many individual calls as necessary will be held to discuss the issues, especially because they center on grand lists and tax bills.
In a letter dated Jan. 21, Rainaldi thanked Ayala for meeting with him and other assessors on Jan. 20 about the situation, saying “these errors are impacting the ability for each assessor in each Connecticut municipality … to properly complete our Grand Lists (tax lists) as required by statute. During our meeting, we discussed the issues that caused many of these errors in the new CIVLS software and possible ways to fix them.” Municipal assessors use the DMV data as of October 1 to determine July motor vehicle tax bills each year.
Rainaldi then asked Ayala to follow-up on their discussion to have the DMV mail a letter to vehicle owners with data errors by March 1, 2016. He said vehicle owners should be asked to confirm or correct the Connecticut DMV data on file. He also asked that the DMV pay the taxpayer’s postage.
This is in an effort, he wrote in his letter, to have motor vehicle tax bills sent on time and from the correct town. “If this data is not corrected before the July tax bills go out, we expect these 60,000 to 90,000 vehicle owners will either not receive their tax bills because their address was incorrect or they will receive tax bills from the wrong town.” If their motor vehicles taxes were not paid on time they would be unable to re-register their cars until the taxes are paid, he added.
“This scenario will not serve our taxpayers or municipalities well and will not reflect well on assessors or the Connecticut DMV next summer,” Rainaldi noted in his letter to Ayala.
The DMV has been in chaos in one form or another for the past year as it attempted to replace a 40-year-old computer system. This latest disclosure, errors in the new CIVLS software, is likely to lead to additional turmoil as assessors grapple with errors in domicile addresses.
The major problem faced by towns is that it is unlikely these tax errors will be resolved by March or April and that presents problems as some may find themselves doing budgets without a finished grand list.Branford will not face this issue because Neal signed off on the net $3,507,148,779 grand list for 2015, explaining the unresolved issues the town faced with the motor vehicle data problem.
The net grand list grew by a smidgen, up about 0.62 percent. But it is not yet complete because appeals are being filed and the Board of Assessment Appeals (BOAA) will hold hearings in March. The final numbers for the grand list will not be known until the BOAA completes hearings for those who seek them and makes its findings. Residents and owners of commercial and industrial properties may also appeal to Superior Court if they are still aggrieved.
School Bus Fiasco
According to state assessors working on the problem, many school buses were transferred to a very few towns. For example, Ellington had 28 buses on last year’s tax list. This year the number of buses jumped to 1,958. That may be because First Student Bus Company has a corporate office in Ellington. Typically a town records only the buses used in its town. It appears that Ellington’s buses fell under the company’s corporate address. That means other towns are minus their school bus listings.
Seymour, the DMV spokesman, told the Eagle today that the school bus situation was corrected three days ago.
According to documents filed in Town Hall, there are about 100,000 problem motor vehicle records throughout the state or about 3.3 percent of the 3 million motor vehicles records on file. Many of these fall in the category of duplication.
“Problem areas also have centered on zip codes in the registration data leading to inaccurate domicile addresses before, during or after the CIVLS conversion, commercial vehicles being assigned to the wrong tax town including the school buses and leasing company vehicles information sent to the wrong tax town,” one assessor wrote in outlining the key problems.
Many company-owned vehicles have the wrong domicile address. DMV now uses the address listed at the Secretary of the State’s office as the domicile address for company-owned vehicles.
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