A Massachusetts Department of Transportation project manager responsible for auditing the state’s Merit Rating Board told lawmakers during testimony this week that she had flagged thousands of unprocessed out-of-state traffic violations in her preliminary audit findings in April.
Brie-Anne Dwyer, who testified before the Joint Committee on Transportation on Tuesday, told lawmakers how she had found 12,000 “open tasks” in the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles computer system three months into her audit of the board. She recalled telling Merit Rating Board Director Thomas Bowes in March about the open tasks in the RMV’s computer system, which she said referred to unprocessed out-of-state violations.
Dwyer sent her supervisor a memo on April 22 with three recommendations, including one to shift responsibility from the unprocessed out-of-state violations from the Merit Rating Board to the Driver Control Unit. She said she also met with then-Registrar Erin Deveney and other officials to notify them of her recommendations.
In late June, seven motorcyclists were killed and three more injured when a pickup truck and trailer driven by Volodymyr Zhukovskyy slammed into them on a road in Randolph, New Hampshire. Zhukovskyy, who tested positive for drug use at the time of the crash, has been charged with negligent homicide.
Zhukovskyy still had his commercial driver’s license at the time of the wreck, but Massachusetts determined afterward that it should have been revoked based on a May 11 drunk driving arrest in Connecticut. That oversight is just one of thousands caused by a backlog identified in the audit, but not acted upon.
Mass. RMV officials have said a new internal review prompted by the deadly crash has resulted in license suspensions for more than 1,600 Massachusetts motorists.