The state agency that assists Bay Staters with blindness or vision impairment has for several years been failing to update the Registry of Motor Vehicles “on a regular and consistent basis” about which drivers are legally blind, an in-progress audit found.
Officials said Wednesday that the uneven pattern in place, which both agencies are working to address, could pose a safety risk by slowing the RMV’s efforts to suspend licenses for Bay Staters whose vision should prevent them from driving.
Jason Thibault, the chief audit and compliance officer at the state Department of Transportation, briefed the agency’s board at a public meeting Wednesday about preliminary findings from an examination of the RMV’s Medical Affairs Unit.
Thibault said the Mass. Commission for the Blind is supposed to send a file of Massachusetts residents deemed legally blind to the RMV’s unit “something like several times monthly or weekly.” However, the agency has only provided that information about “19 times over the past several years,” he said.
“With the file not coming regularly from the Mass. Commission for the Blind, there was no agreement in writing between RMV and the Mass. Commission for the Blind regarding cadence [of delivery], expectations, processes, et cetera,” he told the MassDOT Board’s Audit and Finance Subcommittee.
Thibault added that both agencies have been “very prompt and responsive” to the audit, and the RMV and MCB are working to establish a formal memorandum of understanding to lay out standards for the file-sharing process. He said he expected the document to be returned from the MCB by the end of the month.
“The goal in this memorandum of understanding, or what’s being drafted here, is weekly file submission. At the very least, it will include written process requirements, follow-up protocols, a prompt escalation process where the RMV finds we have potentially legally blind drivers to the RMV driver control unit, which will be tasked at the end of this process with deciding license suspensions,” he said.
In the meantime, the RMV is following up more regularly with MCB to request updated files of legally blind Bay Staters, according to Alan Chiu with the Registry. Chiu added that the RMV has already “seen improvements” in the frequency of file delivery.
