RMV

Adrianna Ferreira of Brighton had a pretty sweet deal, prosecutors say: She'd take money from immigrants seeking help with Immigration or driver's licenses and when they complained when she did nothing for the money, would either threaten them with deportation or actually turn them into ICE.

Ferreira, 48, a worker at the Watertown RMV, was arraigned today on 27-count indictment after a three-year investigation by the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, State Police and Homeland Security.

A federal appeals court said today a state contract with a Globe subsidiary to include ads in car-registration renewal notices a few years back did not violate a federal law aimed at protecting the privacy of drivers' personal information.

The Globe reports the RMV is moving to suspend the licenses of immigrants who flew to Arizona to get driver's licenses because that state lets applicants take an interpreter with them into the written test, while we don't.

Yeah, get that outrage out now about the lowlifes from overseas endangering all us excellent native drivers. What the Globe doesn't mention until the 13th paragraph, however, is that Massachusetts offers its written test in 26 languages - but many of those are languages of immigrants in, oh, the 1940s:

Advocates say that while the state does offer the driving test in many languages, the options are out of date - featuring Finnish and Hungarian, but not the languages of Somali Bantus or other recent refugees. The list needs to be expanded, they say.

Crime Boston has details of an 18-year-old indicted in federal court on charges he sold crack cocaine and heroin - which he allegedly stored in bags clenched in his buttocks - in the men's room at the Chinatown Registry of Motor Vehicles.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today some evidence against a man charged with driving down I-93 while drunk and with a cracked windshield can't be used against him because he was initially pulled over for having black tape over "Spirit of America" on his license plate.

Got my car inspected earlier today. As it is model year 1999, I was only expecting the safety check. Therefore, in reading the inspection report, I was suprised to learn they had also done an emissions check as well (BTW, the car passed both safety and emissions fine)

Just checked out the MassRMV "Vehicle Check" inspections page and come to find out that, sure enough, the old "safety every year, emissions every other year" inspection system has been eliminated. So both safety and emissions checks are now required at every inspection cycle.

Now, did I somehow miss prior announcements about this change, or is this indeeed something the RMV had slipped under the radar when nobody was watching?

Dan Kennedy reports:

... I paid up online. I got an e-mail confirming that I paid. Yet now I have to call the Registry just to make really, really sure. ...

Word comes from Patrick aide-de-camp Doug Rubin that Gov. Patrick has told the RMV to rescind that $5 fee for talking to a live person, and find other ways to get people to interact with the registry online rather than in person.

Mike Mennonno flunked the written part of his driver's test today, but that's not what got him grumpy at the Chinatown RMV.

RMV to charge $5 to talk to a person.

Dvsjr was at a Registry office today when he sprang into action. He tweets:

Battery backup at the registry starts screeching. I'm in line, go up to the counter, "its ok maam Im an IT guy" reset the fuse. Clapping.

Somebody's Daughter and Somebody's Teacher reports her car almost failed inspection today - not because her lights or brakes or horn don't work, but because her license-plate cover obscured part of the vitally important "Spirit of America" slogan at the bottom. Sure enough, the Registry informs us of the vital importance of not covering up this vitally important part of the license plate:

And it's only electronic - no more paper notifications.

Massachusetts permits interest groups to use Commonwealth auto registration as a fund-raising and advocacy mechanism. As you know from an earlier post, "Massachusetts Choose Life says it is only 214 sign-ups away from getting the Registry of Massachusetts to begin offering "Choose Life" vanity plates..."

Massachusetts Choose Life says it is only 214 sign-ups away from getting the Registry of Massachusetts to begin offering "Choose Life" vanity plates - part of whose proceeds would then fund the group's mission.

The state requires non-profit groups to either sign up 3,000 motorists for a charity plate or 1,500 motorists if the group puts up a $100,000 bond. The plates would cost $40 - with $12 going to the state to pay for stamping out the plates at MCI Cedar Junction and the rest going to Choose Life (there is an additional fee for swapping out an existing Massachusetts plate).

If you hurry down to your nearest RMV office:

As Paul Keleher discovered.

Posted under this Creative Commons license in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

I probably missed an earlier story or something, but this Herald piece kinda rates a fail because it says the feds are investigating possible safety issues at new RMV offices at the Charlton and Natick rest stops without ever saying what those safety issues are. Anybody know?

Bobby Constantino accompanied a young guy to the Registry for his written exam today:

... After a few minutes, he came out from the testing room shaking his head. "Yo, Bobby man, I can't believe they just did that man. They just asked me what kinds of cars you can drive with a Class A license, which I am not applying for, a Class B license, which I am not applying for, a Class C license, which I am not applying for, the registration period for a motorcycle, which I am not applying for, and all kinds of other crazy questions that we didn't even go over. They didn't have any of the stuff about intersections, parking, passing, changing lanes or nothing like that, man. That was just a setup so they could take our money. For real." ...

Michael Graham charged with running red light, driving with a revoked license in Framingham, according to Jessica Heslam, who also posts Graham's statement on how it's all Rachel Kaprelian's fault, because under her command, the Registry no longer sends out notices of revocation, and he didn't know.

Innocent, etc.

The Herald reports transgendered people no longer have to provide a detailed letter from their doctor if they want to change the designated sex on their Massachusetts driver's licenses:

Under the new policy, a gender marker can be changed by the applicant submitting an updated application and a gender designation change form. The form attests to the gender that the applicant identifies himself or herself to be. That form must be signed by the applicant and a medical provider.

The Globe plays Snopes and reports the Registry is NOT calling them back in.

The Registry of Motor Vehicles has figured out a way: stop all those damn mailings. Beginning immediately, the RMV will cease mailing the helpful renewal letters for Driver’s Licenses and vehicle inspection that we’ve all become accustomed to. Not to mention reducing business hours at many branches...

Will also stop notifying you when your license is up for renewal.

Pablo makes the case that the Registry should drop everything and replace all our inanely-mottoed plates (and all those old green-on-white plates still hanging around):

... So, here we are in a state of 6.4 million people, and we have exhausted more than 37 million possible plate combinations (including the 900,000 number-only plates from 100000 to 999999). ...

What? There's no way to apply NAT to license plates? (The preceding bad joke brought to you by the Society of People Who Know Just Enough About DNS to Be Stupid.)

That would be the Roslindale RMV on a hot July day.

OK, granted, it's no longer in the basement of the old municipal building, but now it's in this tiny little room up a ramp in the old municipal building, with far too few seats for the number of people crammed into it. And, yesterday, it managed a neat trick: Although the air conditioning was on, you still managed to overheat because a) all the people there and b) no circulation whatsoever. Combine that with all the elephants stomping around upstairs at the community center (well, what sounded like elephants stomping around upstairs) and it was enough to induce nausea.

Now add in extra-friendly RMV workers. We were there to renew Nancy's registration. She has an ankle issue right now, it hurts her to stand for long, so when we got there, she took the only available seat - in front of some PC used for testing or something. She must've been sitting there for 20 minutes before an employee saw her and simply barked, "YOU CAN'T SIT THERE!" Now, in those 20 minutes, not a single person had needed to take an exam there (or do whatever it is one does there). We explained why she was sitting there. Drone replied: "THERE ARE SEATS AROUND THERE! YOU CAN'T SIT THERE!"

Fortunately, there was, indeed, a single seat this time around. But apparently "excuse me" is not in that RMV worker's vocabulary. I wonder if she's the same worker who tried convincing some guy he was dead on one of my earlier visits there.

Kendrick Perkins at the RMV:

... All I could think of is how miserable he looked. I mean the guy just won the NBA championship and were does he end up the following Monday? At the RMV renewing his license. What a total bummer. What ever happened to that "I'm going to Disneyworld" thing. I've never seen a commercial that showed a sports star saying "I'm going to the RMV to renew my license." ...