Want a DMV Hearing? Soon, You’ll Have to Pay in Advance.

On Monday, I spoke to a group of DMV hearing officers about administrative order writing. These are the officials who hold hearings to determine whether a person’s driver’s license is subject to revocation or reinstatement. The bases for hearing officer action run the gamut. They exercise discretion in determining whether a person’s license is revoked for accumulating too many driver’s license points or for excessive speeding. They evaluate and weigh evidence to determine whether a person charged with an implied consent offense did, in fact, willfully refuse chemical testing. They hold hearings to determine whether a person whose license has been restored following a DWI has violated a condition of the reinstatement. They also determine whether to conditionally restore the licenses of people convicted of impaired driving before the end of the statutory revocation period. I can’t say whether the hearing officers learned much from me. But, as is always the case when I interact with a room full of public servants, I learned something from them on Monday. Beginning in January 2018, DMV plans to assess fees for these types of hearings. Some of them are as high as $450. The backstory. Three years ago, the General Assembly directed DMV to develop a proposed schedule of fees to recover the costs of administrative hearings. See S.L. 2014-100, Section 34.9.  At that time, the legislature instructed that the fee schedule be implemented by January 1, 2016.  The next year, the legislature extended the fee schedule implementation deadline to July 1, 2017. [...]