The Boston Globe - 31.07.2019

WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2019 The Boston Globe The Region A

ous the problem was. “We have
no evidence that this issue was
ever framed as being about any-
thing other than old traffic cita-
tions,” she said.
Lawmakers, however,
sounded surprised about how
such a widespread problem
could have gone unnoticed for
so long.
“I think you can see in our
questioning... a skepticism, if
you will, or surprise that this
level of procedural and man-
agement failures within the
Registry was pretty much un-
known to anyone else in state
government,” said Representa-
tive William Straus, who co-
chairs the Joint Committee on
Transportation. “There seems
to be a disconnect there.
“The overall picture I got
was, certainly within the Regis-
try of Motor Vehicles, a lack of
clear mission, a lack of assign-
ments, a lack of clear responsi-
bilities,” he later added.
“There’s clearly still a long way
to go.”
The legislative panel con-
vened the hearing to try to de-
termine why the Registry did
not act on notifications from
Connecticut that Volodymyr
Zhukovskyy had been charged
with drunken driving in that
state in May. The 23-year-old
remained on the road until he
was charged in the June 21
crash that killed seven people in
Randolph, N.H.
Massachusetts officials ad-
mitted afterward that they
should have terminated his
commercial license before the
fatalities.
Deveney resigned amid the
disclosures and shortly before
state officials said the Registry
had deeper-seated problems —
namely that the Merit Rating
Board had ignored tens of thou-
sands of notifications from oth-
er states about Massachusetts
drivers, dating back to at least
March 2018.
But, officials said Tuesday,
warnings about the issue had
lingered long before.
When the state launched
new software that month, De-
veney and the board director,
Thomas Bowes, said they
stopped processing the daily
notices still flowing in amid
concerns the unit was falling
behind on handling Massachu-
setts-based driving citations.
In his testimony, Bowes said
his staff was struggling with ad-

uRMV
Continued from Page A

justments to new software, and

that his requests to Deveney to

bulk up the board’s roughly 62-

person staff went unheeded.

“I did not have the manpow-

er,” he said.

Deveney said the Registry

had to work with a specific

head count for full-time em-

ployees, and that the “obliga-

tion” of the Registry was to “of-

fer the services with the re-

sources that we had.”

“I take responsibility for de-

cisions made,” Deveney said.

A year after that decision to

stop processing out-of-state no-

tifications in 2018, however, an

internal auditor sent Deveney

another warning. Brie-Anne

Dwyer, who works in the De-

partment of Transportation’s

audit unit, testified that in

March she told Deveney that a

backlog of 12,829 unprocessed

notices from other states was

sitting in an electronic queue

within the Merit Rating Board.

The unit was responsible for

processing the notifications

from other states where Massa-

chusetts-licensed motorists vio-

lated driving laws. The notifica-

tions, she said, included convic-

tions for operating under the

influence, speeding, and other

offenses.

Dwyer, who was tasked with

auditing the board starting in

January, said she also brought

her findings to Bowes the same

month. But when she asked

him then who was in charge of

processing them, Bowes was

blunt, she said.

“He stated, ‘Nobody,’ ” Dw-

yer told lawmakers.

Bowes said he contacted an

IT employee about the backlog,

but acknowledged he didn’t

pursue it further.

“An auditor told you there

were 12,829 unprocessed tasks

in the area of your responsibili-

ty and you asked one IT person

[for help] and that was the end

of it?” Senator Eric Lesser, a

Longmeadow Democrat, asked

Bowes at one point.

After a pause, Bowes re-

plied: “Yes.”

Pollack told lawmakers she

was never told of the extent of

the backlog.

The Registry — now led by

an acting registrar, Jamey Tes-

ler — has since suspended the

licenses of more than 1,

drivers who, officials admit,

should have lost them earlier

but did not, because the paper

notices were left unprocessed at

the Registry’s Quincy head-

quarters.

The agency had also failed for

years to notify other states when

their drivers ran into trouble in

Massachusetts. Officials have

said they plan to put a system in

place by Wednesday to automat-

ically generate paper notifica-

tions for other states but that

they will continue to mail them

because there isn’t a system in

place for states to exchange that

information electronically.

Throughout the hearing,

lawmakers continually raised

questions about Baker’s admin-

istration, including how its fo-

cus on improving customer ser-

vice at the Registry may have

handicapped its focus on public

safety, and what his office may

have known about the out-of-

state notifications before the

June crash.

In the fall of 2016, the head

director of the state’s driver con-

trol unit had prepared a memo

— a copy of which the commit-

tee released — specifying there

was a backlog of out-of-state ci-

tations, without describing its

size. The memo was addressed

to Baker’s legal counsel, as well

as the Department of Transpor-

tation’s legal office. But Pollack

told lawmakers that the memo

never made it to them.

“We have located no record

that this draft memo was ever

sent beyond the RMV,” she said.

“It was a draft sent to the regis-

trar but there is no evidence she

ever resent it to its intended re-

cipients.”

Tuesday’s marathon session

came roughly a week after law-

makers abruptly ended a short-

lived and contentious first at-

tempt to conduct a hearing on

July 22, when Baker adminis-

tration officials didn’t produce

witnesses or documents they

wanted and said they could not

answer many questions because

of their own ongoing review.

Each of those invited Tues-

day attended, though some

didn’t testify after the hearing

ran long, including representa-

tives from Grant Thornton, the

auditing firm the state hired to

do a 60-day review of the Regis-

try’s out-of-state violations sys-

tem, and Fast Enterprises,

which developed the RMV’s re-

cord-keeping software.

Martin Finucane and Laura

Crimaldi of the Globe staff

contributed to this report. Matt

Stout can be reached at

[email protected]. Follow

him on Twitter @mattpstout

PHOTOS BY JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

Erin Deveney, the former head of the Registry who resigned in June, said the “obligation”
of the Registry was to “offer the services with the resources that we had.”

The acting registrar, Jamey Tesler, answered questions from lawmakers on Tuesday.

RMV knowingly created

massive backlog of citations

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