CHARLESTON, W.Va. — House leaders believe they have a plan to get a handle on the size of the state’s vehicle fleet. The number of state owned vehicles has become a moving target and caused quite a bit of consternation for some lawmakers who think taxpayer money is being needlessly wasted with the inefficient registration system.
One of the biggest problems with the system, according to Delegate Gary Howell (R-Mineral) who chairs the House Government Organization Committee, is the registration process. Currently there are green state vehicle license plates issued to many quasi-agencies for use on vehicles which are not owned by the state.
“They’re issued to non-governmental agencies like Meals on Wheels or public service districts,” said Howell. “It doesn’t belong to the state, it belongs to a non-profit organization. Even the AFL-CIO has 29 state tags and they’re definitely not state vehicles.”
Howell added those tags are permanent and never need to be renewed. A plan to change that is coming.
“A new state of West Virginia tag would go only on state vehicles,” said Howell. “We’re talking about an orange plate with black letters so it’s totally obvious we’ve made the change.”
The draft legislation would give higher education vehicles a tag which includes the logo of the school using the vehicle since in many cases there are no other school markings to designate where the vehicle is from.
“One of the problems with the green tags is they are permanent, they never have to be renewed, they’re good forever,” said Howell. “Now we’re going to put in a renewal process where, just like you and me, they have to have a sticker. Then when an agency doesn’t ask for the sticker, we’re going to be able to say, ‘Why didn’t you ask for it?'”
Howell thinks changing the process for registration of state vehicles will help get a true count of how many vehicles the state owns. Once lawmakers know the accurate number of true state owned vehicles, an evaluation can be made to determine how many of those vehicles are justified. Howell said tightening up the process will enable state savings.
“All of the new tags would start being issued on November 1st and have to be changed over by December 31st,” he said. “It gives us two months to review all of those vehicles.”
Howell’s bill is expected to be among the first introduced when the regular session gets started in February.