ANNAPOLIS – The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration has identified more than 1,300 residents who may be driving on licenses that could be suspended or revoked, MVA Administrator John T. Kuo said Tuesday.
MVA officials reviewed more than 10,000 licenses with eight or more violation points — the minimum that could warrant suspension — after a state audit revealed problems with MVA’s administrative oversight.
In a sample of 20 drivers charged with 12-point violations, the audit found 16 drivers should have had their licenses revoked, according to Maryland’s Office of Legislative Audits.
The audit alerted MVA to the problem in mid-October. The motor vehicle agency has since conducted an internal review showing 8,800 licenses with eight or more points had been handled correctly, Kuo told the legislature’s Joint Audit Committee on Tuesday.
MVA’s employees are now manually reviewing the remaining 1,356 cases that drew potential red flags, he said.
MVA receives data daily from the courts that is automatically translated into points and applied to driver’s licenses. Kuo blamed the automated software — a new version of which MVA adopted in 2008 — for the missteps.
State Sen. Rona Kramer, D-Olney, grilled Kuo for not noticing the problem earlier.
“Do we have a method now in place for finding these problems before auditors have to go in and find them?” she asked.
Kuo said it’s impossible to manually review every one of MVA’s transactions.
“We conduct over 14 million transactions annually,” he said. “We would love to be able to look at every single transaction we perform, but we [must rely] on checks and balances.”
The auditors also found that MVA electronic databases left drivers’ personal information vulnerable to theft, and that employees did not need supervisor permission to drop drivers from the Ignition Interlock Program — which prevents people convicted of alcohol-related driving violations from getting behind the wheel if they have been drinking.
Kuo said he has already addressed the two findings.
He said the electronic security system has been cleaned up and revamped, and that supervisor approval is now required to drop drivers from the interlock program.
