Lawmakers want to keep DMV centers open

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Some Wisconsin drivers wouldn't have to travel as far to renew their licenses after all. Cars would still have two license plates. And restaurants might start springing up at rest areas.

Democratic lawmakers on the Legislature's finance committee quietly slipped all those changes into the state budget during an all-night session last week. They erased Gov. Jim Doyle's plans to close more than three dozen Division of Motor Vehicle centers and issue one license plate per vehicle and added a provision that would allow commercial development at six rest areas.

The moves come as the state wrestles with a $6.6 billion deficit. Doyle's proposals would have saved the state about $2.1 million, but lawmakers said they didn't want people to drive dozens of miles to the next nearest DMV center, police were worried about moving to a single license plate and developing the rest areas might help save custodians' jobs.

The Division of Motor Vehicles runs 88 service centers. Nearly 60 of them are open only twice a week or less.

Doyle's two-year budget proposal called for closing 40 of those centers. The move would generate about $850,000 in savings, mostly from laying off the 11 workers who staff them, but leave 32 counties without any DMV station.

According to the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau, however, those centers account for less than 5 percent of all driver's license and identification card transactions. And the state Transportation Department says almost all the closed centers still lie within 50 miles of another DMV center.

John Anderson, a spokesman for Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, a Joint Finance Committee co-chairman, said Democrats on the committee felt closing the DMVs would force people to drive too far to renew their driver's licenses.

"For many people, that's one of the few times they encounter state government directly," Anderson said.

Doyle also called for saving about $1.3 million over the biennium by issuing only one license plate to vehicle owners and doing away with registration stickers.

Nineteen other states currently use only one license plate. But Wisconsin police complained the move would hurt their ability to identify suspects and spot expired registrations.

"The amount of (savings) ... that was going to be realized certainly did not measure up to the public safety value of having two plates in Wisconsin," said Doug Pettit, chief of police in Oregon, Wis., and chairman of the Wisconsin Police Chiefs Association's legislative committee.

Doyle's budget contained nothing about developing businesses at waysides.

Anderson said the proposal is meant to save jobs for disabled workers who clean the rest areas.

According to Rehabilitation for Wisconsin, an association of rehabilitation facilities for the disabled, about 330 disabled workers help maintain the state's rest stops, earning about $2.3 million annually. But the association was worried deep cuts to highway maintenance funding would result in layoffs.

"There's not really a lot of options in today's economy for those people," said Thomas Cook, executive director of Rehabilitation for Wisconsin.

Under the Joint Finance Committee's plan, the state Transportation Department could explore lease deals at up to six rest areas or waysides on state highways.

Vendors would have to win a bidding process to build on the waysides and go through a public hearing on their construction plans. They could not serve alcohol or replace existing vending machines. Revenue from the lease agreements would go toward highway maintenance, in turn creating more money to cover disabled workers' pay, Cook said.

Projects might range from signs to coffee shops to perhaps stores that sell Wisconsin-centric merchandise, depending on traffic volumes, said Dave Vieth, director of the state Bureau of Highway Operations. How much money they might generate is anyone's guess, Vieth said.

The state Assembly is poised to take up the budget next Wednesday. The state Senate and Doyle also must approve it before it can become law.

Doyle can rewrite the budget to his liking with his extensive partial veto powers. Doyle spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner didn't return a message seeking comment on the transportation changes.