Despite a slew of reforms enacted last year to rein in the practices of towing companies, more needs to be done to protect consumers whose cars face removal and possible sale, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles said Tuesday.
DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera laid out five recommendations he plans to make for the legislature to consider during its session that begins in February. The recommendations follow a Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica investigation that exposed how state law for decades favored towing companies at the expense of low-income consumers. They also follow months of meetings with a group of industry and consumer representatives.
The recommendations would require towing companies to make more effort to notify owners that their cars have been towed and streamline the process by which the firms can sell unclaimed vehicles.
The commissioner announced his proposal at the last scheduled meeting of a working group of towing and consumer representatives. The group was created as part of a towing reform law passed last year after the news organizations showed how towing companies were seeking the DMV’s permission to sell some cars after as little as 15 days, one of the shortest time frames in the country. Many low-income residents were towed for minor violations, sometimes from their own apartment complexes, only to lose their cars when they couldn’t afford to get them back before they were sold.
If the legislature adopts the recommendations, towing companies would no longer place values on vehicles that they tow, which now determines whether a tower can start the sales process in 15 days or 45 days. Instead, all cars would be sold at a public auction after 30 days, Guerrera said.
Other recommendations include requiring towing companies to send two letters to the registered owner of the vehicle after it’s towed, one certified and one not. If the car isn’t claimed, towers would have to send a third letter to the owner after 30 days to inform them when and where the auction will be held. The towing companies would be required to either advertise the auction on their websites or publish legal advertisements in local newspapers.
The DMV would also be required to set up a portal on its website listing every towed car so that people can find out which tower has their vehicle, when it was towed and when the auction will be.
If a vehicle receives no bids and the car owner shows up, the towing company would be required to offer the car back to them at whatever their costs are before selling it for scrap.
There was little pushback from industry leaders or consumer advocates on Tuesday even though towing representatives had previously complained that the changes would add costs and consumer lawyers had objected that the recommendations didn’t go far enough to protect drivers.
The proposal also didn’t address the initial task the legislature assigned to the group: how to handle the profits from the sales of towed cars. Currently, towing companies are supposed to hold onto proceeds for a year so owners or lenders can claim them. After that, any unclaimed funds, minus towing fees, are required to be turned over to the state. But CT Mirror and ProPublica found that hasn’t happened in part because the DMV never set up a system to collect the money.
Guerrera said after the meeting that the DMV has set up a process to monitor whether towing companies are turning funds over to the state. He said they won’t know if the system is working until October because the money from sales of towed cars must be held for a year.
After Guerrera finished outlining his proposal, Eileen Colonese, secretary of the industry group Towing & Recovery Professionals of Connecticut, said Guerrera’s plan doesn’t address a key issue: The last registered owner of the vehicle is not necessarily the owner when it’s towed.
“I still believe that until the state of Connecticut comes up with a process to figure out who really owns the vehicles, all of this stuff that we’re doing is pretty much nonsensical because we’re still not notifying the current owner of the vehicle,” Colonese said.
Consumer advocate and attorney Raphael Podolsky said Guerrera’s recommendations are a “step in the right direction, but there’s still a lot of issues that need to be addressed until the system is fixed.”
Guerrera said his plan was “inspired” by the discussions during the previous four committee meetings. He said he hopes the portal on the state’s website will also help DMV personnel better track what towing companies are doing with vehicles.
Under the revised law, which went into effect on Oct. 1, towing companies must now give people warning before removing vehicles from apartment parking lots unless there’s a safety issue. They also must accept credit cards, let people retrieve their belongings and be available on weekends for people to pick up their cars. And although the sales process can begin after 15 days for vehicles worth less than $1,500, towers must wait 30 days before selling them.
Guerrera said he expects that the working group will keep meeting.
“I want to have continuous meetings, whether it’s quarterly or twice a quarter, to try and narrow down any issues that come up or that need to be fixed so that we can create a system that works for everybody,” Guerrera said.
