**Message to SD Legislators: Fix vehical VEHICLE titles and registration

Nothing like having a few junkers that alternately run or sit parked waiting for parts and then running the gauntlet of strange rules that have been slipped in with the new "improved" database system to add some daily frustration..even when the courthouse staff is helpful and friendly.

 In the past, if a person had a vehicle not used for about a year and finally got it running, and then re-registered it, the county could prorate a few days of the previous year remaining and tack it on to the regular period for the coming year. This would seem to only require that the database system be able to divide by 365 and multiply by days from "today" until the end of the past registration period. But no, now even if only 10 days of last year fixed by your last name remain, the system only allows paying for the whole previous year and the whole next year.

 I understand that in South Dakota underhanded screw the least able to fight back tax changes are routine, but this is something they can fix without costing the state a potload of money and would make the system much fairer. Fix it.

 And, in the area of wrecked cars (see a couple of previous posts), sure, you can pull your plates of the wrecked vehicle, but then what? Well, if you run right out and buy a vehicle from a dealer you can use the plate. My son's plates had a sticker a whole two days old before his car was wrecked. So, we got one of his other clunkers running after we finally got a working control module or computer and thought...himm, why not stick the plates on that since it had not been running for nearly two years? Well, you can't do that. It appears that instead of helping vehicle owners, that the whole actual function of the new law is to make it easy for dealers to remove the plates from vehicles so that buyers have no idea where or who it came from or for that matter how many years it has been sitting on their lot priced too high for market conditions. Fix it. Or, if it isn't possible to get plate refunds on wrecked cars, get it done.

Now, we get to something that is truly upside down, backwards, and inside out. That is the system that allows counties to set up wheel taxes that tax only the first 4 wheels on any vehicle. Isn't that special? The tax should be set up so that the first four wheels are exempt. It is not 2500 pound cars and pickups that destroy highways. Heavy trucks hauling goods that should be on railroad tracks do thousands of times as much damage per gallon of fuel consumed as do small cars. Now, the legislators are worrying about the terrible effects of fuel efficient vehicles on gas tax revenue. Legislators seem to be in some alternate universe.

 That "loss" is insignificant compared to the actual losses resulting from grossly under taxing heavy vehicles while screwing socially responsible drivers. Fix it.

 More evidence that if you ain't rich, most legislators don't give a tinker's damn about your situation or that of thousands of other of the unrich. Maybe that is something all of us unrich need to fix ourselves.

And, I know my old high school grammar teacher Mae Vanderhule is probably rolling in a grave gnashing teeth about using "fix" instead of "repair" or "re-make".

 

***Stay tuned even if you don't give a tinker's damn about old grammar rules --- Doug Wiken

Comments

[usaroadtripper]

Jeez, what a bunch of drivel. And I'll bet Mae would be even more upset that you misspelled VEHICLE in the headline.

And socially responsible people don't let junkers sit around and pollute the scenery. Fix them or get rid of them.

[John]

usaroadtripper must be new to Dakota Today. Compared to some posts, this one is downright meaty! :-)

About two years ago I bought a used Chevy for my daughter from a dealer here in California. Apparently the car had been for sale for a long time, because the tag renewal was overdue by about 11 months. I ended up paying two full-year registration fees in the first month that we had the car.