The state company that assists Bay Staters with blindness or imaginative and prescient impairment has for a number of years been failing to replace the Registry of Motor Automobiles “on an everyday and constant foundation” about which drivers are legally blind, an in-progress audit discovered.
Officers mentioned Wednesday that the uneven sample in place, which each companies are working to handle, might pose a security danger by slowing the RMV’s efforts to droop licenses for Bay Staters whose imaginative and prescient ought to forestall them from driving.
Jason Thibault, the chief audit and compliance officer on the state Division of Transportation, briefed the company’s board at a public assembly Wednesday about preliminary findings from an examination of the RMV’s Medical Affairs Unit.
Thibault mentioned the Mass. Fee for the Blind is meant to ship a file of Massachusetts residents deemed legally blind to the RMV’s unit “one thing like a number of instances month-to-month or weekly.” Nevertheless, the company has solely supplied that details about “19 instances over the previous a number of years,” he mentioned.
“With the file not coming often from the Mass. Fee for the Blind, there was no settlement in writing between RMV and the Mass. Fee for the Blind relating to cadence [of delivery], expectations, processes, et cetera,” he informed the MassDOT Board’s Audit and Finance Subcommittee.
Thibault added that each companies have been “very immediate and responsive” to the audit, and the RMV and MCB are working to ascertain a proper memorandum of understanding to put out requirements for the file-sharing course of. He mentioned he anticipated the doc to be returned from the MCB by the tip of the month.
“The purpose on this memorandum of understanding, or what’s being drafted right here, is weekly file submission. On the very least, it can embody written course of necessities, follow-up protocols, a immediate escalation course of the place the RMV finds we’ve got probably legally blind drivers to the RMV driver management unit, which can be tasked on the finish of this course of with deciding license suspensions,” he mentioned.
Within the meantime, the RMV is following up extra often with MCB to request up to date recordsdata of legally blind Bay Staters, based on Alan Chiu with the Registry. Chiu added that the RMV has already “seen enhancements” within the frequency of file supply.
