RMV’s Merit Rating Board considers onboarding more staff for backlog

As a backlog remains of more than 12,000 work queues that could result in even more license suspensions at the RMV, the Merit Rating Board is considering bringing in more manpower to get it done.

“If it can be done accurately, we want to get through the backlog as quickly as we can,” Attorney General Maura Healey’s appointee to the board, Glenn Kaplan, said.

The Merit Rating Board, the obscure RMV division last tasked with processing out-of-state license suspensions that led to the ongoing records scandal, met Wednesday with updates on their collaboration with the Office of the Inspector General, their search for a permanent director and quality control work on the queues.

Paolo Franzese, a manager from the state’s Division of Insurance who has taken on the role of interim director while the board pursues a permanent replacement, updated it on the existing queue of 12,341 work items as of Monday.

Franzese said if he were to bring on additional staff he would assign them to citation processing, which is “a lot easier to learn,” than other, more complicated tasks within the division.

Acting Registrar Jamey Tesler noted that the queue will be a continuous flow of notifications coming in from out of state and will never reach zero, but that of the older citations that went unprocessed, there are no more “serious offenses.”

Emily Pederson, Director of the Inspector General’s Internal Special Audit Unit, spoke briefly during the meeting as well, outlining the unit’s role in reviewing the Board after Kaplan suggested asking the IG to embed an employee within the board to act as an added “line of defense,” during a previous meeting.

Pederson said the unit will be, “essentially looking at the roles, responsibilities, current processes and provide recommendations for overall operations.”

An entire team has been created for the endeavor Pederson said, and have met with the board and are reviewing documents. They will begin meeting with staff Thursday and continue into next week.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2BZdZzs