Seeing red at the MVD:
Officials determined to fix Gallup office’s problems

ABOVE: New Mexico Cabinet Secretary Rick Homans talks with Gallup Motor Vehicle Division manager Lydia Mazon on Tuesday. Officials from the state office in Santa Fe came to visit the Gallup Motor Vehicle Division office help develop a strategy for reducing wait times at the office. BELOW: New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division director Ken F. Ortiz watches as Gallup office manager Lydia Mazon conducts a transaction on Tuesday. Officials from the state office in Santa Fe came to visit the Gallup Motor Vehicle Division office help develop a strategy for reducing wait times at the office. [photos by Brian Leddy / Independent]

By Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff writer

GALLUP — The bigwigs from Santa Fe drove down Tuesday to check out motor vehicle division operations in Gallup and Grants.

Secretary of New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department Rick Homans and Director of Motor Vehicle Division Director Ken Ortiz stopped at the Grants office first, where they both agreed things were “OK.” They then moved west to the Gallup MVD office on West Aztec.

Both men are concerned with the time customers have to wait to complete their transactions at the department, and Homans said they were determined to fix it. He said many people are driving to Grants to complete their transactions to avoid waiting for service.

Much of the problem, Homans said, is the department has not learned to manage the upgrade to the new system where driver’s licenses are sent from Santa Fe and photos are put onto handicapped placards. Many other little problems created “a perfect storm” about a month ago, when Director Ken Ortiz was gone for a week, Manager Lydia Mazon was on vacation for a week, two employees in the Gallup office were out on sick leave, and the new system was implemented. Most customers come to complete their transactions during their lunch hours, when the employees go on their own lunch breaks. Then the computers went down.

“These are big issues we’re confronting,” Homans said.
The solution?

Homans and Ortiz talked about having an “MVD-On Call List,” a list of people, maybe some retired MVD employees that can be called when needed “like substitute teachers.”

They also created an “Express Lane,” for people who have a quick and easy transaction. Last week, Homans said, the office had local dealers drop off batches of title and registration papers and manufacturers origin papers to title new vehicles. Each vehicle takes about 20 minutes to complete, which includes a vehicle identification number inspection outside on the vehicle and a NCIC check on one computer to make sure the vehicle isn’t stolen. That is time-consuming and can leave customers with a simple vehicle-registration transaction waiting for more than an hour if they don’t know about the express lane. With an average of 200 vehicle dealer transactions, it eats time.

“So, we’re working on a solution to that,” Homans said.
Mazon added that several times a day she goes out into the waiting room to see who needs simple transactions and who can be routed into the express lane. She said she tries communicate and have contact with the people in the waiting room every day.

If somebody is having a birthday, she announces it on the public speaker and sings one or two lines of the birthday song. And if somebody comes in for an updated ID or driver’s license on their 21st birthday, she tells them

“Happy Birthday” on the public speaker and reminds them if they drink, don’t drive, please call their mother.
Homans said an office like the MVD needs an outgoing person who is good with the public in addition to improving efficiency.

One of the major problems is the office does not take debit or credit cards. Cash only.
Cash only?

The problem with debit/credit cards, Homans explained, is the anti-donation clause in the state law. When a person updates his registration online, they are charged by the state an extra $1.29 for the online transaction. That is what the credit card companies charge the state for the transaction. The state cannot pay it, so the customer must. That’s fine online, Homans said, but in a face to face transaction, no extra money can be asked for as the fees are stipulated by the state, and the credit card companies must be paid a percentage from the initial cost.

“It’s a very complex issue,” Ortiz said. “We would need an appropriation by the state legislature to take credit/debit cards,” Homans added.

Ortiz and Homans have ideas to expedite things at the office, such as having dealers drop off their piles of paperwork to title vehicles and picking up the finalized transactions later, hiring a contractor to do driving tests and soliciting bids for a private agency to operate of MVD satellite office.

Both men are determined to ease the waiting time at the Gallup MVD office, get more help in the Gallup office and find ways for people to pay with a credit/debit card.