Can the RMV do anything right these days?

From the Herald:

MassDOT lawyers refused to provide more than 53,000 documents to auditors investigating the RMV failures that led to the deaths of seven people in June — raising the “glaring” question of what else the embattled agency is hiding, watchdogs say.

“That fact that 53,000 documents were withheld and not reviewed makes a glaring argument for further investigation,” said former state inspector general Greg Sullivan, who called on Gov. Charlie Baker to elevate the review to the inspector general’s office.

Baker and Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack hired the auditing firm Grant Thornton in June as the scandal of deadly incompetence at the Registry of Motor Vehicles exploded in the wake of seven motorcyclists’ deaths. News emerged that the RMV had failed to suspend the license of trucker Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, after a Connecticut operating-under-the-influence charge that should have prompted automatic action.

Zhukovskyy was arrested in Connecticut a month before he was criminally charged with killing seven bikers in New Hampshire on June 21 — a crash during which he was high on drugs, according to a federal report.

MassDOT released the 106-page Grant Thornton audit at 4:42 p.m. on Friday — in a classic example of the notorious Friday afternoon news dump, widely used by beleaguered government agencies to bury embarrassing stories in the least-read newscycle of the week, a move criticized by local government watchdogs like Sullivan.

MassDOT spokeswoman Jacqueline Goddard did not address calls for the state inspector general audit, but noted a second independent review by the Legislature was ongoing in addition to the Grant Thornton report. Goddard said the withheld records were a fraction of the more than 4 million documents requested by auditors. She declined to say what was in the documents or why they were deemed “privileged.”

The RMV scandal has been a major black eye for Baker’s administration, amid a flurry of other transportation woes plaguing the state.

The report stated the RMV’s “long-standing policy of not prioritizing the processing of out-of-state notifications” was a factor in the state’s failure to revoke the license of the 23-year-old trucker, Zhukovskyy.

The audit suggested 19 recommendations for the RMV, many that have already been instituted in the wake of the latest scandal. But it also identified ongoing fail points in the registry’s system and the lack of avenues for employees to point out errors at the agency.

State Rep. Shaunna O’Connell, a longtime critic of RMV oversight, said she wants to know what other failures could be concealed in the 53,391 documents MassDOT lawyers refused to let the auditors see.

The Taunton Republican said the public is entitled to information as the agency, which is responsible for critical public safety issues and directly impacts many citizens lives, also takes “a lot of money from taxpayers.”

“The more info we have about what’s going on in the RMV, the better,” O’Connell said. “I think the taxpayers have a right to know.”

MassDOT lawyers deemed the withheld documents “privileged,” according to the report, which did not elaborate on why the information was classified that way.

Sullivan, a research director at the Pioneer Institute, said the state inspector general’s office has complete authority to look confidential records to root out fraud, waste and abuse in government as an independent office designed to protect the public trust.

“They could contain highly significant information that should be reviewed,” Sullivan said, calling their review “urgent.”

Last week’s report detailed the depth of the failure in processing infractions that allowed Zhukovskyy to keep his license — RMV employees found 72 boxes, 53 mail bins, and five banker boxes of unprocessed paper out-of-state notifications dating back to 2013, prompting the audit and immediate efforts to deal with the backlog, according to the report.

More than 5,000 driver’s licenses have now been suspended as a result of the scandal, 3,391 of which were found in the backlog of out-of-state notifications of license infractions that included Zhukovskyy’s and 1,869 through a state data comparison with the National Driver Registry.

O’Connell said the reforms suggest Baker’s administration is “taking this seriously,” but she agreed with the need for independent review. Grant Thornton is a private firm, but has been paid more than $500,000 to date to conduct an independent review of the RMV.