Jim Shella: The BMV is an example of when government works

Government is the problem. 

That is the prevailing theory currently in America and Indiana. Government is bad, and the less government we have, the better.

Let me argue that government can, in fact, be the solution. There might be no better example than what has gone on within the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I am convinced because of a customer service experience I had with the BMV earlier this month, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.

First, I think it’s worth recounting some history. As recently as the 1980s, the license branch system that grants drivers’ licenses and sells license plates and vehicle titles was operated by the Indiana Republican Party. That’s because the GOP was the party of the governor. The GOP chair in each county ran the branches and kept profits. Oh, there were profits. Never mind that service was terrible.

In the early ’80s, there were a number of scandals, most notably one in Muncie that I and WISH-TV Channel 8 reported on repeatedly over several months in 1983. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went missing from the Delaware County license branches, and a grand jury indicted GOP County Chair John Hampton.

It was a messy affair. At one point, Hampton’s children were named in a sealed indictment. I learned the contents of that indictment, and my reporting led to a charge of prosecutorial impropriety against Special Prosecutor Gerald Surface. He avoided conviction and so did Hampton. The accountant for the license branches eventually took the fall.

Nevertheless, the publicity led voters to seek change in the license branch system. License branch reform was a key issue in the 1984 race for governor. Democrat Wayne Townsend promised a state takeover of the license branches if elected. Before Election Day, Republican incumbent Bob Orr, feeling pressure, agreed to consider reform. And when re-elected, he oversaw the return to government control of the license branches.

It did not go well at first, and that is an understatement. With limited hours and poor staffing, people who worked a 9-to-5 job had to go to a license branch on Saturday morning to get service. The line would be down the block before the license branch opened, and the wait for service was sometimes three to four hours.

Then, around the turn of the century, WISH-TV reporter Sandra Chapman did a series of investigative reports to spell out just how terrible things were both at the license branches and behind the scenes. 

Again, the public took note and politicians reacted. When he became governor, Mitch Daniels made it a priority to improve service at the BMV, and he was successful, in part by making it possible to conduct BMV transactions online.

And that gets me back to my recent transaction. I was notified in an email that my driver’s license was about to expire. The email included a link to the BMV website where I was allowed to renew my license without a personal visit to the license branch. A new law, it seems, makes it possible to renew online every other time your license expires.

I completed the transaction in a matter of minutes, and the new license arrived in the mail in three business days. It’s breathtaking if you compare it to the old find-a-free-Saturday-and-give-it-up experience of the past.

My point is that media exposure combined with public pressure will cause politicians to respond with the money and attention it takes to solve a problem.

Now, what should we focus on next?•

__________

Shella hosted WFYI’s “Indiana Week in Review” for 25 years and covered Indiana politics for WISH-TV for more than three decades. Send comments to [email protected].

Click here for more Forefront columns.