Image provided by: SEIU Local 503; Salem, OR
About The Oregon state employee. (Salem, Oregon.) 1944-195? | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1951)
30 Renew Your Auto License Immediately on Expiration Date If you knew all that is involved in licensing the state’s 750,000 motor ve hicles, you’d probably understand why it is important that you renew your licenses immediately upon the expir ation date. So says Carl Gabrielson, head of the Secretary of State’s motor vehicles division for 3®v3|ars. Take, for example, the . story of one application on a new car license, which arrives some morning in 'thet secre tary’s Salem office. If you think all the secretary has to do is run down to a basement storeroom and select a nice high number for you, you’re in for a surprise. There are some 284 tegular employ ees of the Department of State in Sa lem who spend all their working hours’ processing the estimated 2,000 appli cations for new and renewed licenses received each day. In addition, the Portland branch and other branches throughout the state bring the motor vehicle licensing payroll to 378 tegu lar employees and about 27 extra help ers. Before a new car license'leaves the care of the state, approximately 20 of these employees .have helped process it and ready it for mailing | H the car owner. Since 1949, when the “staggered” licensing was initiated in Oregon, the Herculean task of keeping records on all vehicles in the state has beeh fair ly simple, Gabrielson says. “There’s, only one difficulty”, adds. “With no big year-end push to get plates, it’s strictly.up to the own er to remember to renew., his license during the month stamped on the plates. Some never remember until they are arrested and fined for wear ing the wrong year tabs.” But, even though the staggered sys tem has simplified the processing job involved in licensing cars, a trip through the motor vehicll!» d ivis io n 1 seems to the uninitiated like a trip lie through the mirror maze of an amuse ment park fun house. When an application arriveWin- Sa lem, the first person to handle it is the remittance clerk, a fancy title for the man who takes the $10 fee, gives I the application a number, and then sends it on its way to other processors. The application is shuttled to a huge file-lined basement room, where men and women check on motor numbers to make certain that a license has nev er been issued. In addition, on new cars, all attached documents must be carefully scrutinized to assure that all signatures and so forth are in order. I f an application passes the probing eyes of the checkers, it is sent to the title department where it is again scanned for legality and validity of title and then given a title number. It’s almost official now! But, first, it goes back to its start ing place for another fee check and a balancing of funds. By now, the ap plication is almost half-way through the maze, and its next stop is a room full of typists, who spend eight hours a day, five days a week typing the title and tab numbers on each license slip and new registration card. After the typists have finished, the applica tion heads for the “ ditto” room where a battery of duplicating machines turns out ten copies of each applica- tion. Another crew sorts the copies, one of which III sent to the huge master or original application file, its perman- I ent home. The others find their way into such complicated files as the en gine number file, the alphabetical file, the numerical file, the Portland num erical, the auditor file and, finally, several go to special services in Portland to provide licensing informa tion to dealers. This may seem like an undue num-
