This article was created for Propublica’s local reporting network in collaboration with Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatch to get stories in your inbox every week.
The Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles Working Group will consider some of the state’s towing laws, potentially leading to wider reforms than those passed in the last legislature.
The 10-person committee, which first met on Monday, will need to report its recommendations to lawmakers by February. Originally, they were tasked with examining a smaller portion of Connecticut, where revenue from towing vehicles must be transferred to the state, but members said they wanted to study how vehicles are evaluated by towing companies and other aspects of the sales process.
The movement came after a year-long investigation by Connecticut Miller and Propublica. The state laws have been found to support towing companies at the expense of low-income residents.
The committee, chaired by DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera, includes three towing company owners, two consumer advocates and other DMV officials. The group discussed several issues still plaguing the towing industry and vehicle owners after Congress overhauled the state’s more than 100 years of law in May.
Passed with bipartisan support and in effect on October 1, the law will make it difficult to tow vehicles from private property and make it easier for drivers to retrieve vehicles after towing. The law also constrains the practices that allowed towing companies to begin selling some vehicles in 15 days.
The bill also created a DMV working group to study how towers handle profits from towing vehicles sales. Under the law, if the owner does not regain it, the towing company can sell the vehicle, but it must hold revenue for a year so that the vehicle owner can claim money. If the owner never moves forward, the company must deduct the fees and then hand over the proceeds to the state.
This year, Guerrera told lawmakers that the DMV never set up a system for the process and he didn’t know what money was being sent to the state by the Tower. He said the DMV is considering the issue and the committee is ready to address it in its report.
Guerrera said Monday that the working group should expand its mission to study wider changes to make it easier for low-income residents to reclaim their cars.
“There must also be a way to make sure people know what’s going on when the car is towed,” Guerrera said. “A $1,000 vehicle is a lifeline for them and they need to get it back, so that’s important. So how can you get it back in a way that doesn’t keep accumulating more fees?”
Committee members discussed creating a new way to monitor the owners of vehicles by requiring the DMV to submit records of the sale to the owners. Currently, the tower is about to reach the vehicle’s last registered owner, but some people told CT Mirror and Propublica that their car had just purchased and the car would not be sold as it was not yet necessary to register. New law allows vehicle owners to retrieve the vehicle by submitting a title or bill of sale in lieu of registration documents.
“The majority of the problem is the fact that you can’t get a vehicle owner,” says Salcena, owner of Senna Brothers and Cross Country Automotive in Hartford. “People are buying cars, they don’t register them, they tow them and go back to the last person who owned it a few years ago.”
The committee also addressed several other issues, including the development of a standardized process to determine the value of towed vehicles. If the towing company considers vehicles under $1,500, it can be sold faster.
Guerrera questioned how the tower came up with estimates. “If you have three or four grand cars, the next thing you know, it’s valued under $1,500, how did it happen?” he asked.
Connecticut legal services lawyer Raffy Podolski said tower valuers have been a problem for consumers for a long time.
“We hope that either the department or industry has data that allows a kind of comparison between the estimated value of a car and the amount of dollars coming to resell,” he said.
A towing industry representative said another priority should modernize the DMV process to get permission to sell someone else’s car. Farmington Motorsport’s Irene Colony will spend several weeks sending documents to the DMV and the vehicle owner.
Connecticut’s new towing laws will help some drivers, not all. This is what they said to us.
“There are all kinds of portals. Why are there no portals for this?” Colony said. “Everyone has everything submitted electronically and access to a more standardized, modernized system.”
The working group must submit a report to the Congressional Transportation Committee by February, and Guerrera said it is important to create something that all members will support.
“When we went to Congress with information that we met with the industry on both sides, this is what we came up with, we are in good condition,” Guerrera said. “Now if we stop again, it’s in the hands of Congress now and we don’t know what will happen.”
