Now, however, the agency is becoming notorious for another problem: chronic corruption. This is from an Aug. 11 AP report:

As many as 100 commercial truck drivers paid up to $5,000 each to bribe state Department of Motor Vehicles employees for illegal California licenses, federal authorities said Tuesday.

 

Up to 23 traffic accidents could be related to the fraud, officials said, though there were no fatalities.

 

Emma Klem, a 45-year-old Salinas DMV employee, and trucking school owner Kulwinder Dosanjh Singh, 58, of Turlock, both pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit bribery and identity fraud, U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner said.

 

Two other DMV employees in Salinas and Sacramento and two other Central Valley trucking school operators have been arrested on similar charges.

 

Court records say the employees changed computer records to falsely show that drivers had passed written and behind-the-wheel tests after they were bribed by the owners of three truck-driving schools between June 2011 and March 2015. …

 

The DMV revoked or cancelled 602 commercial licenses that could be linked to the fraud, including the 100 that were pinpointed by investigators, said Frank Alvarez, the DMV’s chief investigator.

Bribery cases concentrated in San Diego County

This is only one of several recent cases. This is from a June Union-Tribune report:

SAN DIEGO — A California Highway Patrol officer is the second person to be charged in connection with a DMV bribery scandal.

 

Carlos Ravelo is accused of illegally transferring a temporary driver’s license to a driver, once in September 2013 and again in January 2014, according to an indictment unsealed in San Diego federal court last month.

 

Ravelo is a 13-year veteran officer and works at the CHP’s El Cajon station.

In March, a Westminster DMV employee was arrested and charged with two counts related to taking bribes to provide driver’s licenses.

The Los Angeles Times also notes other cases in San Diego County:

In February, a San Diego DMV official pleaded guilty to accepting bribes for setting aside license suspensions and providing unauthorized temporary licenses to drivers who had lost theirs after being arrested on DUI charges.

 

Last year, five employees of the DMV’s El Cajon and Rancho San Diego offices were convicted in connection with a bribery scam in which licenses were improperly provided to clients of a local driving school.

Low starting pay may be driving scandals

These are in addition to 21 FBI arrests related to bribery at the same two offices in May 2012. This is from the FBI’s press release:

United States Attorney Laura E. Duffy announced today that employees at the California Department of Motor Vehicles in San Diego County were charged in a criminal complaint for their involvement in a long-running bribery conspiracy that resulted in the production of hundreds of fraudulent driver licenses for applicants who had failed — or not taken — the required driver license tests.

 

The complaint alleges that DMV officials at the El Cajon DMV office … and the Rancho San Diego DMV office … falsely entered both “passing” written and “passing” driving test scores for applicants in exchange for bribes ranging up to $3,000 per license.

 

In addition to the DMV employees, 16 other defendants were charged in the complaint. … According to court documents, the corruption scheme involved the fraudulent production of both Class C (regular) and Commercial Class A driver licenses. Hundreds of applicants paid recruiters approximately $400- $500 for each fraudulent Class C license … .

Considering that the starting pay of a “business service assistant” at DMV can be as low as $29,940 a year, this may be behind clerks deciding to augment their income illegally.

On July 2, 2012, the California Supreme Court ruled that the state’s charter cities are not required to pay prevailing wages under state law for local public works projects that are funded by local funds.  In State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, AFL-CIO v. City of Vista, the court made clear that charter cities in California have the autonomy to decide individually whether to pay prevailing wages for local construction projects. This decision may tempt cities not organized as charter cities to change their legal status, as the city of Vista did in this case, in order to avoid the prevailing wage law.

That led the unions to induce the Legislature to pass a variant on this bill that banned charter cities from using state funds for public works projects unless they paid prevailing wages — and the tweaked version on Wednesday was upheld by a San Diego court. This is from the U-T San Diego:

An attempt by several cities to overturn a state law that forces them to choose between paying generally higher or “prevailing” wages on most public works projects or lose state construction dollars has been turned aside in a tentative court ruling.

San Diego County Superior Court Judge Joel Wohlfeil rejected arguments from the cities of Oceanside, Vista, Carlsbad and El Cajon [and El Centro and Fresno] that the requirement violates the state constitution. …

Wohlfeil wasn’t swayed in his tentative decision, ruling the law “appears to legitimately influence local governance by attaching conditions on the receipt of discretionary state funding.” He also said pursuing state policy objectives through financial incentives is generally constitutional.

But as I pointed out in a U-T San Diego editorial …

Wohlfeil cited the law’s purported objective — “the statewide concern of creating and maintaining a skilled construction work force” — but not the real one: helping unions.

The cities are expected to appeal if Wohlfeil doesn’t change his mind before issuing a final decision.

So much for spirit of CA Constitution

While I have blamed the unions and the Legislature in this post, it’s worth noting this never would have happened had Gov. Jerry Brown not signed the two bills into law.

It’s impossible to look at the intent of the charter city provision in the California Constitution and think these two bills bullying charter cities honor the spirit of the provision’s goal of local autonomy.

Who knows this? Yale Law School graduate Edmund G. Brown Jr.