DMV is so Dumb

Disclaimer: I worked for DMV for 1.5 years in the 1960s.

I got a letter from the California Dept. of Motor Vehicles today. Effective in September my vehicle registration will be suspended because they don't have a record of insurance coverage.

I just paid my insurance. When I did, CSAA assured me that DMV would automatically be notified. So what's the problem?

Well, it turns out this is not about my RAV4, the car I drive every day. It's about my 1978 Chevy truck. The one that hasn't been on the highway for more than 7 years. The one that I haven't paid registration on for more than 7 years. The one that hasn't run for maybe 10 years.

I would have been paying for the registration, but DMV stopped sending me registration notices 25 years ago. The only way I could pay was to go to a DMV office and ask them to find the information on their computer. Every year for 18 years this happened. Every time I went to DMV I asked them to check what the problem was and please fix it. A couple of times the person behind the counter said, "It's not our responsibility to send you a notice, it's your responsibility to know when it's due and come in and pay it." Duh. Isn't that what I was doing, standing there in front of them?

For years I paid for insurance on the truck, even though it didn't run.

When I switched my insurance to CSAA and discovered they have an internal DMV desk at their building, I took the paperwork for the truck and asked if they could help me. They could not, they said, because the DMV file was not operating properly and they couldn't access it.

This year when I paid my car insurance, I finally had the truck taken off the policy. That must have triggered an automatic switch at DMV. (I'm guessing it was a dip switch.)

I see on this notice that I have 3 choices. I can go to the DMV web site, I can mail evidence of insurance, or I can call the automated voice response system and follow the prompts.

In bold print at the bottom of the page it says: DMV Staff at field offices and call centers cannot provide vehicle insurance program services.

In other words, there is no way you can talk to a real person; there is probably no way this problem can actually be resolved. There will be no button on the web site for "This is the result of a DMV error." If there is a space to type comments, it will only take 500 characters for my 2500-character explanation. I will get frustrated. The only thing I can type in 500 characters or less is curses. I could do that, but I've turned over a new leaf since being driven crazy by stupid men. I'm trying to be reasonable and logical.

I could mail a letter about the whole problem. Again. I've done this at least twice over the years and never received a comment. Most likely I'll get a piece of paper with a check by the box that says "No insurance evidence was attached."

I'm not taking a trip through automated-voice-response hell. DMV has an especially frustrating version of this.

DMV isn't the only dumb California agency. I also got a letter today from the Board of Equalization. What is this, you foreigners might ask? That's the board that collects our state income taxes. What do they equalize, you wonder? I don't know. In this case the letter has nothing to do with income taxes. The State Dept. of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) is charging me $115 because I own a structure within a State Responsibility Area (SRA).

I already pay taxes to a Fire Protection District. The closest State fire truck is so far away it would never get to my house in time, that would be handled by the local Fire Protection District. This new tax was supposedly brought about because in the flammable foothill and mountain counties people have built houses everywhere. When there's the inevitable big grass or forest fire, the state sends trucks to watch the houses burn, while the local fire departments are trying to save them. The state says it costs too much money to "protect" houses in the highly flammable areas and that those property owners should pay extra for catastrophic protection.

Well maybe. But I don't live in an area like that. I'm surrounded by irrigated fields and bare dirt. The levee used to have grass on it and occasionally there would be a small grass fire on it (put out very quickly by the local fire department). But the levee is bare dirt. The levee district now sprays it with Round-up in the late spring.

Yes, my house could catch on fire. Yes, the outbuildings could catch on fire. But it wouldn't be from any catastrophic fire that Cal Fire is responsible for. The houses at Rancho Murieta are in more danger from that than my house is. I wonder if those people are being taxed?

I sit here today with not one, but THREE stinking stupid EIRs to read and comment on. Three more totally dumb ideas from people outside this area who are determined to screw over everyone in our area just so they can make a buck.

I am so damned tired of this. We have an election coming up, but there is no place on that ballot that has anything to do with all the daily doo doo that citizens have to put up with. The ballot is so irrelevant to reality it might as well ask "What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?"

Is all of this carefully constructed by devious politicians? I doubt it, they might be devious but they're not notably clever and they don't cooperate well enough with one another to accomplish anything clever.

I think I'll go water the birds now. It's been another hot, nasty day. Maybe I'll give them some sweet corn as a treat. Smiling chickens might be able to pull me out of this dark mood. Then I'll watch another episode of Dog Whisperer.