OH, SOMEHWERE in this favored land the sun is shining bright, but at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, never. There, honest men and women are made to feel like serfs, joylessly growing old in lines that barely move, clutching their identification papers and their wallets as they wait and wait for their numbers to come up, never knowing what trivial omission is going to send them to the back of the line, or to a different line, or to a different building altogether.
Some months ago I urged a gubernatorial candidate to campaign at the Registry and its branches. Nowhere else, I told him, are you as certain of finding so many voters so disgusted with the way government treats them. Nowhere else is the fundamental incompetence of state bureaucrats so nakedly on display. If you want to meet citizens at the moment they are most receptive to a call for government reform, meet them when they are wasting half their afternoon trying to get their driver's license taken care of.
That candidate hasn't taken my advice. He now lags in the polls. Others may profit from his example.
What in the name of Rube H. Goldberg is so complicated about renewing driver's licenses and automobile registrations? American Express and Visa renew hundreds of thousands of credit cards every day, cards that are worth real money, and nobody has to stand in line anywhere. This newspaper manages each morning to deposit a brand-new edition at your front door, and will continue to do so for as long as you wish, without ever requiring you to spend your lunch break dancing attendance on a surly clerk. Travel agents, insurance companies, overnight shippers — all of them are able to dispatch valuable documents by the millions, keep track of the records you want kept track of, and generally make themselves accessible to anyone with a telephone.
But when it comes to cars and driving, we have allowed ourselves to be conned into the belief that a government role is indispensable. And that that government role, alas, can only be performed ineptly, inconveniently, and in ill humor. Why?
For no good reason. It isn't necessary that vehicles be registered. True, cars can be dangerous, but so can gas grills, Rottweilers, and bottles of cheap whiskey. Registration may sometimes foil thieves, but (a) most of the time it doesn't, and (b) on that argument, the state ought to register gold chains, laptop computers, and high-end stereos.
Drivers likewise. Why, in a free country, should anyone require a license from the authorities to operate a car? And be forced every few years to fork over a wad of money to renew it? Why isn't it enough to have successfully completed a driver's ed course (and to be liable, of course, for any damage caused by recklessness)? No one needs government approval to ride a horse or ski down a mountain or whip around on rollerblades. What makes driving different?
 Wherever you see a Registry office, there you see a monument to taxation without justification. |
Nothing does. The licensing of drivers by the state is not about safety or the public welfare. It is about revenue. State officials don't care about the color of your hair or your ability to read a vision chart. They care about that wad of money. Care so much that in some places they will humiliate you and treat you as a criminal in order to get it.
In Washington, D.C., reports The Washington Post this week, thousands of drivers caught with an expired license have been "taken away in handcuffs and jailed until they pay a $75 fine." In just the first six months of 1998, District of Columbia police have hauled 4,300 drivers off to jail, an average of one per hour, 24 hours a day. Would that police in the nation's capital threw as many murderers behind bars.
In Massachusetts a few years ago, former Governor William Weld proposed to end his state's addiction to Registry fees — more than a quarter-billion dollars annually — by making driver's licenses and automobile registrations good for life. No one would ever have needed to visit the Registry again, because no one would ever have needed to get his driving papers renewed. Predictably, the Democratic Legislature balked at the idea; predictably, Weld shrugged and dropped it.
Now comes Patricia McGovern, the least knee-jerk of the three liberal Democrats running for governor of Massachusetts, with a call for abolishing the Registry outright (good), and devolving its functions to the cities and towns (bad). "There's not a private sector business in the world that would treat its customers this badly," she said on Wednesday.
But her terminology is all wrong. Registries of motor vehicles — in Massachusetts, Washington, or anywhere else — are not businesses. They provide no useful service. Drivers are not their "customers." No one stands in those infuriating lines and pays those larcenous fees because they choose to. They stand and pay because they are forced to — because they may be handcuffed and jailed if they don't.
Wherever you see a Registry office, there you see a monument to taxation without justification. McGovern's suggestion is one small step in the right direction. But the only permanent cure for "Registry rage" is to explode completely the myth that the government — any government — should be licensing drivers or registering automobiles in the first place. The state has no more business keeping tabs on the car in your driveway than it does on the books in your bedroom.
Ah, but where's the candidate who'll say so?
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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