This is what Arnold needs to do more of, and be highly visable about it. I always hated the California DMV. He couldn't have picked a better place to start.
An impatient Arnold wages 'shock and awe' on DMV
By Daniel Weintraub -- Bee Columnist - (Published November 23, 2003)
With dozens of Gray Davis appointees still filling every nook and cranny of state government a week after Arnold Schwarzenegger took office, how did one of them -- Steven Gourley -- find himself out of a job almost before the inaugural schnitzel had cooled?
The sacking of the former director of the Department of Motor Vehicles is the story of an impatient new governor, a too-cautious executive and, in the end, a hated bureaucracy coming through. If it proves to be a model for how the new administration gets things done, the episode at the DMV could mean that Schwarzenegger's pledge to shake up state government is more than just idle talk.
Gourley, a former Davis campaign treasurer, was showing a reporter around a south Sacramento DMV office Monday afternoon when he got a call on his wireless phone from Marybel Batjer, Schwarzenegger's cabinet secretary.
"I am sorry to do this over the phone instead of in person," Gourley says Batjer told him, "but we've appointed a new interim director. We want you out by the end of the day." It was already after 3 p.m. Gourley wasn't planning on going back to his office. And he had outpatient throat surgery scheduled the next day.
"Then you'll just have to stay late tonight," Gourley says he was told.
Why the rush? Schwarzenegger, sworn into office just a few hours before, had signed an order rescinding the tripling of the car tax Davis put in place in June. Schwarzenegger said the cut would take effect immediately.
But by Monday afternoon, word was getting back to the new governor's press office that the DMV was saying it didn't know when the tax cut would take effect. It might take 30 days to reprogram the computers. And there was a law that appeared to require 60 days notice of any change in the car-tax rate.
Rob Stutzman, Schwarzenegger's communications director, saw Batjer at the Chamber of Commerce's inaugural luncheon and passed the word along. Batjer decided to act. She did so before she made it back to the Capitol, axing Gourley and accelerating the appointment of a longtime Capitol troubleshooter, Chon Gutierrez, as the new director.
The tax-paying motorists weren't Schwarzenegger's only concern. Californians, reacting to the higher tax or waiting for it to drop again, had stopped buying cars after Oct. 1. Sales dropped 30 percent for the month.
The car dealers, big supporters of Schwarzenegger's campaign, pleaded with the governor-elect's transition team to make it clear that the tax was coming down, and when. Schwarzenegger did so, but still, people were waiting on the sidelines.
Once he took office and signed the order, the dealers needed to find a way to begin charging the lower rate immediately. They feared at first that they would have to wait weeks, until the DMV computers were reprogrammed.
Meanwhile, millions of Californians were sitting on invoices they'd received in the mail, wondering if they should pay the full amount and wait for a refund, or refigure the tax at the lower rate and send that in, risking a penalty.
Gutierrez, who has worked for every governor since Ronald Reagan, arrived on the job Tuesday morning and quickly convened a session of top managers. Among them was Ed Snyder, a 49-year veteran of the department who started as a clerk in the mail room in 1954 and rose to deputy director.
Gutierrez said the staff from Snyder on down was eager to get the job done but figured it would probably take the full three months to make it happen.
"We started looking for shorter-term milestones that we could accomplish," Gutierrez said.
The decisions: Let car dealers charge the lower rate immediately and send in their daily checks as usual. Then the DMV would hold the paperwork until its computers were up to speed.
Customers mailed bills with the higher amount would be allowed to pay the lower rate if they wished. And the state would add a calculator to the department's Internet site to help motorists figure out how much they owed.
"We're mindful of the risk that some people will make errors, doing the math themselves," Gutierrez told me. "If they overpay, we will send them a refund. If they underpay, we'll send them an invoice." How civilized.
Gourley, meanwhile, insists that nothing really changed after he was fired, though he acknowledges that he had questions about the wisdom of the full-speed-ahead approach (for one thing, he thinks it might cost more to process the payments this way). He figures he was made a scapegoat for public relations purposes, or to send a message to the rest of state government.
"This governor believes in shock and awe, apparently," Gourley said Wednesday as he recovered from his surgery. "I am shocked and awed." Also jobless. |
