Central Mass. driving school cries foul in early termination of 1-year contract with RMV

WEST BOYLSTON - Less than a year into its contract with the state Registry of Motor Vehicles to administer road tests for applicants seeking state Class D driver’s licenses, a Massachusetts driving school claims the agreement was terminated four months short and has asked its attorneys to demand it be reinstated without prejudice.

“We submitted a bid through the RFP process to administer road tests (for the RMV) to relieve the burden of expected applicants due to the implementation of the Work and Family Mobility Act,” said Jake Cooney, owner of Central Massachusetts Safety Council, Driving School, based in West Boylston but with facilities located throughout the county. It has been in operation since 1987.

The law, passed in 2022 over former governor Charlie Baker’s veto, went into effect July 1, 2023. It allows all Massachusetts residents, regardless of legal status in the United States, to apply for a Massachusetts driver’s license.

The driving school received notice at the end of last month that its contract would be terminated as of March 1, 2024. The school, which had invested $250,000 to meet the contract specifications, has cried foul.

“We contracted for space in Worcester and Avon, hired and trained dozens of staffers as both instructors and examiners and worked with (Massachusetts Department of Transportation) MassDOT and (Registry of Motor Vehicles) RMV staff,” Cooney said.

The school opened testing centers in Worcester, Avon and Framingham, each staffed with four examiners. The school expected to conduct as many as 1,140 road tests a week (combined total) if each examiner worked to capacity. The state was to pay $58 per completed test to CMSC. Examinations were scheduled through the RMV website, with listings for all dates, times and locations available, as well as the option to request an RMV-supplied interpreter for the test.

The agreement stipulated a one-year contract with an option to renew the partnership for a second year.

“We went into the agreement with both eyes open,” Cooney said.

The attorney for CMSC, Scott Sinrich of Phillips, Silver, Talman, Aframe and Sinrich in Worcester, said the state needs a “good faith” reason to terminate the contract early.

“They (CMSC) did a wonderful job, there were no complaints,” Sinrich said, adding that the state monitored the CMSC testing locations and the examiners closely to ensure the examiners adhered to RMV testing standards and protocols. The state, Sinrich said, was free to terminate the contract at its expiration if it was dissatisfied with the service provided or had cause for complaint.

“Terminating the contract early is unfair to the business and unfair to those residents who need the service,” Sinrich said. He said the legality of the agency’s action has yet to be determined.

There has been no response to the letter from the state to date, Sinrich said.

A spokesperson for MassDOT reached by the Telegram & Gazette said: “The RMV notified CMSC on January 30, 2024, that it was exercising its contractual right to terminate the Agreement effective March 1, 2024. RMV strongly denies the allegations and claims made in the letter sent by CMSC’s attorney.”

The driving school was the first third-party administrator of the examinations contracted by the RMV. The state traditionally only allows its own staff to act as examiners in the road test portion of a driver’s license application. Applicants either schedule an exam at their local RMV office, or testers travel to public schools that offer driver’s education classes as part of their curriculum.

However, in light of the expected increase in demand for licenses, calculated at between 45,000 and 85,000 residents over three years, the state opted to contract with the school. The majority of those seeking a Class D license would be required to apply for a learner’s permit and take the road test to qualify.

Massachusetts has 30 sites located throughout the state where residents can take a road test. An additional site in North Andover is accessible only to members of the Automobile Association of America. The driving school added three sites, one in the heavily Brazilian community of Framingham.

According to the RMV website; the agency processed 91,961 learner’s permits in the first six months of the implementation of the Work and Family Mobility Act, a 244% increase in the demand. The agency issued 54,952 new driver’s licenses, a 120% increase in demand over the same period in 2022. In addition the agency converted 33,648 licenses issued by other states that had enacted similar laws earlier than Massachusetts, Connecticut being one.

On the agency website, Monica Tibbits-Nutt, the CEO and secretary of MassDOT, the department that oversees the RMV, said she was “proud” of the agency’s response to the increased demand.

“We are especially proud of the language and interpreter assistance provided to applicants, underscoring our commitment to helping all eligible applicants,” Tibbits-Nutt said. “We’d also like to thank our nonprofit and community partners for assisting the registry with public education about the new law, which helped to enhanced customer service options.”

The contract the agency signed with CMSC was in addition to its own expansion, including the hiring of 250 staffers and extension of its testing days, hours and locations.

In the letter sent to the attorneys representing MassDOT and RMV, Sinrich also contends the agency erected roadblocks since the contract’s inception to deter the full implementation of its specifications. Training new examiners, and evaluating their abilities, was conducted on a leisurely basis, Sinrich contends.

The school, according to the letter, had received complaints that its testing availability was constantly shown as being “fully booked,” on the RMV website. Applicants showed examiners screen shots of the contested times all marked in red, signaling they were unavailable, during times when examiners were idle. There were also times motorists claimed they requested an RMV interpreter through the website but were faced with taking the road test alone because no one had been assigned.

The letter also details the school’s attempts to resolve issues. Despite meetings between the school and RMV project managers, the issues reported in the scheduling portal by applicants were resolved only in December. The number of road tests performed at the Framingham facility jumped from a low of 24 a day to 80 or 90 in recent weeks.

“Blocking CMSC tests in Framingham therefore has especially hurt its immigrant community — the people the WFMA was designed to help — by denying them access to license exams where they needed them,” Sinrich wrote in the letter. “It thus seems inconceivable that you would terminate CMSC‘s licensing program in a community where there is such a demonstrably great need for the service.”

Cooney said CMSC had strived to hire as many multilingual examiners as possible to better accommodate the immigrant community members it was expecting at its testing locations. Some 90% of the people the school tested at its Framingham location were Brazilian women, Portuguese speakers.

Shuttering the auxiliary examination centers would only serve to hurt the population that the Work and Family Mobility Act intended to help, Cooney said.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Expiring in June, CMSC requests contract term be honored