The Massachusetts Department of Transportation is facing a $15 million budget cut, according to Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s budget recommendation for the fiscal year 2013.
The budget recommendation proposed a total budget of $32.3 billion for 2013, according to Patrick’s statement.
The FY2013 budget is a 2.98 percent increase from 2012’s budget, which means an extra $935.9 million in spending next year.
MassDOT Secretary and CEO Richard Davey addressed concerns about the budget cut in a statement last Thursday.
“The Governor’s budget released yesterday included a roughly $15 million reduction in funding for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation,” Davey said in the press release. “It has been misreported in many news outlets today that this cut will result in longer wait times and service reductions at Registry of Motor Vehicle branches.”
MassDOT hopes to offset the budget cuts by selling or leasing pieces of its real estate portfolio and generating advertising revenue, including web-based advertising, according to the statement.
“The [RMV], like many other agencies across state government, is changing the way it does business,” Davey said. “In this age, it no longer makes sense for many people to go to an RMV branch to conduct the same transactions they can do in minutes from their home computers.”
In 2011, the RMV conducted about 3 million transactions online, according to the statement.
But MassDOT will still keep their RMV branches open for residents who are unable to conduct their business with the RMV online. The department also worked with AAA to allow simpler services for AAA customers at six branches across the state.
“Only if we are unable to generate the entire amount of revenue needed to absorb the cut will we look to reduce services at the RMV,” Davey said.
Proposed RMV cuts would affect Boston University students who live in the Bay State and their interactions at the registry.
“I’m pretty surprised to hear that they’re cutting that budget, that seems strange to me,” said BU College of Engineering junior Doug Webster, who is originally from Massachusetts.
Webster said the RMV is already using outdated technology and budget cuts could just exacerbate the issue.
“I was doing the permit test at the RMV and we had to use the most ancient machines ever,” he said. “They looked like they were from the 70s or something, and I remember just being amazed that they hadn’t updated the machines in all this time.”
Webster also said he was skeptical of the RMV’s efforts to move more transactions online.
“I think that would reduce the amount of people at the RMV so it would be a shorter wait, and I guess you wouldn’t need as much staff,” he said. “I don’t know though. It doesn’t seem good to be cutting government jobs.”
Efficiency – not money – might be the solution to the RMV’s notoriously slow system, said BU School of Management sophomore Kristen Kruczkowski, who is also a Massachusetts resident.
“Honestly, I think that giving them more money wouldn’t really help,” Kruczkowski said. “I think they just need to develop a new process rather than get more funding, because I’m not sure what they would do with more money rather than just make the process more efficient.”
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