This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
A Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles working group will examine portions of the state’s towing law, potentially leading to more extensive reforms than those passed by the legislature last session.
The 10-member committee, which met for the first time Monday, must report its recommendations to lawmakers by February. It was originally tasked with examining a more narrow piece of the Connecticut law that requires proceeds from sales of towed cars to be remitted to the state, but members said they also want to study the way vehicles are valued by towing companies and other aspects of the sales process.
The move comes after a yearlong investigation by The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica found that the state’s laws favored towing companies at the expense of low-income residents.
The committee, which is 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 the legislature overhauled the state’s more than 100-year-old law in May.
That legislation, which passed with bipartisan support and takes effect Oct. 1, makes it harder to tow vehicles from private property and easier for drivers to retrieve their vehicles after a tow. The law also constrains practices that had allowed towing companies to start the sales process for some vehicles after 15 days.
The bill also created the DMV working group to study how towers handle profits from sales of towed cars. Under the law, towing companies can sell a vehicle if the owner doesn’t reclaim it, but they are required to hold onto the proceeds for a year so the vehicle owner can claim the money. If the owner never comes forward, companies are required to turn over the proceeds to the state after subtracting their fees.
This year, Guerrera told lawmakers the DMV never set up a system for this process and wasn’t aware of any money being remitted to the state by towers. He said that the DMV has been reviewing the issue and that the committee would be prepared to address it in the report.
Guerrera said Monday that the working group should expand its mission to study broader changes that make it easier for low-income residents to get their cars back.
“There’s got to be a way, too, to make sure that people know what’s going on when their car gets towed,” Guerrera said. “That’s important because that $1,000 vehicle is a lifeline for them, and they need to get it back. So how can we get it back in a way that doesn’t keep accumulating more fees?”
Committee members discussed creating a new way to monitor who owns a vehicle by having the DMV require the owner to submit a record of sale. Currently, towers try to reach the last registered owner of the vehicle, but several people told CT Mirror and ProPublica that they were never informed their car would be sold because they had just bought it and weren’t required to register it yet. The new legislation does allow the vehicle owner to submit a title or bill of sale instead of registration documents to get their car back.
“A huge part of the problem is the fact that we can’t get ahold of the owner of the vehicle,” said Sal Sena, owner of Sena Brothers and Cross Country Automotive in Hartford. “People are buying a car, they don’t register them, it gets towed, and everything’s going back to the last person that owned it a few years ago.”
The committee also tackled several other issues, such as developing a standardized process to determine the value of a car that has been towed. If a towing company deems a vehicle worth $1,500 or less, it can sell it more quickly.
Guerrera questioned how towers come up with their estimated values. “If you’ve got a car that’s three grand or four grand, next thing you know, it’s valued under $1,500, how did that happen?” he asked.
Connecticut Legal Services attorney Rafie Podolsky said how towers value cars has long been an issue for consumers.
“I’m hopeful that either the department or the industry will have data that will allow us to kind of make some comparisons between the presumed value of the car and the dollar amount that comes in on a resale,” he said.
Towing industry representatives said another priority should be modernizing the DMV’s process for getting permission to sell someone’s vehicle. Eileen Colonese of Farmington Motor Sports said towers spend weeks sending paperwork back and forth through the mail to the DMV and vehicle owners.
“There’s portals out there for all kinds of things. Why is there not a portal for this?” Colonese said. “Everyone can submit everything electronically and have access to a more standardized and modernized system.”
The working group must submit a report to the legislature’s Transportation Committee by February, and Guerrera said it’s important to produce something that all members support.
“If we go to the legislature with a piece of information that says we have met with the industry on both sides, and this is what we’ve come up with, we’re in good shape,” Guerrera said. “If we bog down now again, you know, now it’s in the hands of the legislature and we don’t know what could happen.”
