You asked for additional information regarding the 2003 fee increase for the safe driving practices course required for 16- and 17-year-olds getting their initial drivers’ licenses. In a previous report to you on the course fee, OLR Report 2005-R-0082, we provided historical and other information regarding this requirement. In that report we identified that the fee for the course was increased from $ 40 to $ 125 in 2003. You wanted to know what the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) considered when it approved the fee increase.

SUMMARY

When it was first created by the legislature in 1989, the safe driving practices course had to be five hours and the maximum fee that could be charged was statutorily capped at $ 25. The cap was increased to $ 40 in 2002. The next year the legislature increased the course to eight hours and eliminated the statutory fee cap, instead requiring the DMV commissioner to set the maximum fee by regulation. During the regulation adoption process, DMV appears to have initially proposed an increase in the maximum fee to $ 90. However, the final regulations submitted to the legislature’s Regulation Review Committee for approval establish the maximum fee at $ 125. Representatives of the commercial driving school industry, in particular, Jack Sousa of the Driving School

Association of Connecticut, had argued for a fee of $ 150, based on Sousa’s presentation that the per pupil cost for them to provide the course for students who were not also taking the rest of their instruction from them was $ 136.

2003 FEE INCREASE

The legislature increased the fee cap for the five-hour course from $ 25 to $ 40 in 2002, effective July 1, 2002. However, in 2003, it increased the course requirements from five to eight hours with four, rather than two hours devoted to alcohol and drug issues relating to driving. At the same time, the legislature eliminated any statutory cap on the fee and required the DMV commissioner to determine the maximum fee that could be charged for the stand-alone course by regulation.

DMV published a notice of intent to amend the regulations to implement the legislative changes to the safe driving practices course in the Connecticut Law Journal in October 14, 2003 and held a public hearing on the proposed regulations on October 30, 2003. DMV’s initial proposal for the maximum course fee in the draft regulations apparently was $ 90. At the public hearing, DMV took testimony from 11 owners or representatives of commercial driving schools, three of whom testified with respect to the proposed fee. But the only substantial testimony with respect to where the fee should be set and why came from Jack Sousa, representing the Driving School Association of Connecticut. The other driving school owners spoke about issues primarily relating to the course curriculum and the maximum hours of training that students enrolled in high school could take in any training session.

Several references in the public hearing transcript indicate that DMV’s initial proposal for the maximum course fee was $ 90. Sousa and two others make reference to a $ 90 fee in their testimony (DMV Hearing Transcript, pp. 7, 20, and 25). One person, Cindy Luca, stated, “When [I] submitted my new fees for next year, I put in, as far as the safety program, the eight hour, I put in ninety to one hundred twenty, going on the suggestion that you had in the regulations of ninety dollars. ” (p. 25)

However, Sousa proposed that the fee be set at $ 150. He based his position on a cost analysis he developed and provided to DMV on August 14, 2003 claiming that the cost per student for providing the safe driving practices course to students on a stand-alone basis, i. e. , those being home trained, was $ 136 (detailed below). The two other driving school representatives who testified at the public hearing with respect to the course fee both endorsed Sousa’s $ 150 proposal.

Although the legislature raised the fee from $ 25 to $ 40 in 2002 as part of PA 02-70, Sousa’s testimony at the DMV public hearing seems to indicate a different perception, suggesting that the fee had been $ 40 for the previous seven years. He made the following statement when asked to comment on the course fee.

“Let me kind of go through the history of it since I was intimately involved in it since its inception. First of all, the program, the five hour program, when it was originated had a two hour segment for alcohol and three hours of safe driving practices. Upon its adoption by the legislature the fee was twenty-five dollars. That fee remained at twenty-five dollars for a period of six years. And then, seven years ago, we went back to the legislature and asked them to increase it to fifty dollars and compromised with members of the Transportation Committee to a forty dollar fee and it has remained at that forty dollar fee since, well, it’s a seven year period. ” (Transcript, p. 8)

Later in his testimony when commenting on the fact that about 35% of new license applicants are home-trained and therefore only take the safe driving practices course on a stand-alone basis, Sousa states “And my fear is that if the fee is set at such a low rate, which already is seven years without any fee increase, the problem that will occur is what was beginning to occur at the forty dollar fee, and that is that it was simply not cost effective. ” (p. 9)

Sousa made a similar assertion in the August 14, 2003 cost breakdown he provided to DMV prior to the public hearing on the proposed regulations. In his letter he stated, “The statutory, approved rate is fourty (sic) dollars ($ 40) for the five hour program and has not been adjusted for several years. ”

Sousa provided DMV with the following per student cost analysis of the new eight-hour program from his perspective:

The regulations DMV submitted to the Legislative Regulation Review Committee for review and approval contained a maximum course fee of $ 125, an increase of $ 35 over the $ 90 fee it had proposed initially and $ 25 less that the industry had proposed. The committee approved the regulations on February 24, 2004.

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