New Chief of DMV Outlines Reforms in Safety Program

Stricter supervision and new management controls have been ordered by the new head of the state Department of Motor Vehicles to improve the agency’s driver safety program, which has come under scrutiny since a hearing officer admitted that he accepted money and sex from people who appeared before him.

A. A. Pierce, the agency’s new director, acknowledged in an interview in Sacramento last week that the 30-year-old program, which is intended to remove unsafe drivers from California highways, needs better supervision.

In recent weeks, Pierce said, he has reorganized the agency’s bureaucracy to add two managers whose “sole responsibility” will be ensuring the consistency and quality of tens of thousands of rulings made by 137 DMV hearing officers in 22 districts throughout the state.

Pierce also said a team of 10 auditors under his direct authority will be dispatched to the department’s field offices “to spot check or randomly review” rulings by the hearing officers. Eventually, Pierce said, information about the rulings will be more fully computerized to enable local and statewide managers “to constantly monitor what is going on.”

The hearing officers have broad authority to uphold or set aside action taken by the DMV to revoke or suspend drivers’ licenses. Most of the hearings involve the DMV’s point system, which flags drivers who have accumulated four or more traffic tickets in a year. The hearing officers also review the cases of drivers with medical problems who have been reported to the DMV by physicians or law enforcement officials.

Pierce said the program must be set up to help hearing officers resist undue pressure by a driver desperate to hang onto his license, which Pierce dubbed “the symbol of independence in California.”

Even before the recent firing of hearing officer Michael R. Tarrish, Pierce said he was “already starting to look at that program and find out . . . how we could manage it better.”

Tarrish, 47, was dismissed in January after admitting that he had taken sex and money from people with cases before him.

During hours of interrogation, Tarrish told department investigators that on at least two occasions he accepted money or sex in exchange for favorable rulings in license hearings. In addition, Tarrish said he handled nearly 50 cases in which the drivers were represented by attorneys who had loaned Tarrish money. In many of those cases, Tarrish said his rulings could be considered favorable.

Tarrish’s admissions are under review by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. The county prosecutor is also looking into the conduct of six attorneys who appeared before Tarrish. No criminal charges have been filed.

Pierce said the Tarrish case raises the question: “How did this happen within the system of government and what can we do to shore up that system to ensure that it doesn’t happen again?”

Bruce Hannel, president of the Driver Improvement Assn. of California, which represents driver safety program hearing officers, said that management problems with the program arose about 18 months ago. A reorganization of the department at that time, during the tenure of the former DMV Director George Meese, “removed the top echelon . . . the management echelon” of the driver safety program, Hannel said.

Referring to the Tarrish case, Hannel said: “Anybody should have anticipated--when you have lack of control, if there are any bad apples, they’re going to surface at that time.”

Hannel said he met with Pierce several times last year while Pierce was acting as the agency head awaiting confirmation by the Legislature. Hannel said he urged that there be “a resurrection of the management ladder over the (driver safety) program.”

In examining the program, Pierce said he discovered room for improvement: “We found it was spread through two or three divisions in the department, and that was not really the way to manage that program, so we put all the eggs in one basket and have given it to an individual (division chief) . . . who is very familiar with the program.”

Reporting to that division chief are two new regional managers “who have no other responsibility other than managing the driver safety program,” Pierce said.

“I’m not sure, whatever steps we do, that you’re ever going to be able to totally eliminate some deviant behavior by an employee,” the director added, “but hopefully you can catch it in time and deal with it appropriately.”

Citing the steps he has taken, Pierce said: “We’re putting management information systems in place that will clearly indicate early on whether (a hearing officer’s) behavior is deviant from the norms expected in the program. . . . We’re providing training . . . supervisory and management training. . . . We’re holding supervisors accountable for the actions of their subordinates. We’re tightening up the system.”

In addition, Pierce said he has directed DMV officials to undertake a broad review of the driver safety program to see if it is achieving the desired results.

“Right now we’re on a major effort to really look at how we deal with what in general terms could be considered post-licensing control,” the DMV director said.

Meanwhile, the department has concluded its examination of about 200 cases Tarrish handled in the 18 months before he was fired to determine if there are “unsafe drivers out on the street as a result of his activities,” Pierce said.

James Dunn, who conducted the review, said department officials revoked the licenses of two of those drivers, who had been involved in alcohol-related incidents, and ordered re-examinations for 10 others with medical problems.

They also “flagged” 35 other drivers with medical problems so that any future accident will trigger an automatic license review.