Project Phoenix, the $40 million computer system that the state Division of Motor Vehicles hailed as the solution to its problems, is receiving failing marks from auditors across South Carolina.

Auditors in counties from the Upstate to the Lowcountry say the first car tax renewal report from the new system is filled with errors that will cost counties money and lengthen the lines at the agency’s service centers.

Charleston County Auditor Peggy Mosley said people began calling her office to report mistakes on their tax bills “the day after they hit the streets.”

Mosley said more than 2,000 of the 17,298 renewal notices sent to Charleston County vehicle owners had errors. She said 159 had incorrect vehicle identification numbers (VINs).

Mosley said errors in the DMV reports should be corrected quickly so auditors can stay on schedule for mailing out tax notices.

“(The DMV) was getting ready to send out December’s reports when they realized November was all messed up,” Mosley said.

Sid Gaulden, the DMV’s director of executive affairs, said in a prepared statement the “inconsistencies” in the reports statewide were insignificant.

“To date, five inconsistent (owner information) records have been reported by one county and approximately 45 in another,” Gaulden wrote in an e-mail message to the Herald-Journal.

But Spartanburg County Auditor Sarah Broyles said 14,605 vehicles are scheduled for renewal in the county in November, and there were 1,400 errors in the report the DMV sent to her office.

“They did not ask (the auditors) what we needed before they changed the system,” Broyles said. “When these agencies in the state that furnish information to the auditors do not get it right, we’re the ones that have to face the taxpayers.”

Broyles said the errors included incorrect mailing addresses, the deletion of names on co-owned vehicles and inaccurate county codes.

In some cases, owners are being billed for cars they’ve previously sold. In others, the computer system picked up old residential addresses from drivers’ licenses instead of the ones shown on the previous year’s renewal notices.

Still others, where spouses co-registered their vehicles, came to auditor’s offices with one name correct, with the other being a name unknown to the owner, Broyles said.

Jane Guy, the Saluda County auditor, said in some cases taxpayers will have the added inconvenience of going to the auditor’s offices and the DMV. Guy said the foul-ups have cost Saluda County needed income.

Guy said her November report from the DMV is 10 pages shorter than the 100 she received last year.

“When it was all said and done, we lost about 250 vehicles over last year,” Guy said. “That’s tax dollars we’re losing. You’d think if (DMV) spends $40 million on something, it would work.”

Project Phoenix is described on the DMV’s Web site as a five-year plan that will overhaul the agency’s “ technology and business practices.”

The description continues, “The new system will greatly improve services to the general public and services provided to commercial customers such as county tax offices, insurance companies and dealerships.”

Broyles said the DMV could have avoided these problems with better planning.

“The problem is (the DMV) did not parallel Phoenix with the old Legacy system when they went online,” Broyles said. “Anybody who knows anything about computers knows that should have been done.”

Gaulden wrote that differences between the Legacy and Phoenix systems made it “neither feasible nor practical” to pursue a parallel startup.

Additionally, Gaulden said in his statement that paralleling the two systems would have cost the state an additional $3.5 million, and added about a year to the projected online time.

County auditors say the inaccuracies on the DMV report are causing extra work and problems with getting tax notices sent out statewide.

Oconee County Auditor Ken Williams said it’s time-consuming for his employees to make corrections that will enable them to get tax bills out accurately and on time.

Williams said only about 25 percent of Oconee County’s 4,500 November renewal records are correct.

Williams said Phoenix uses postal zip codes to assign county numbers to its records. The problem is that some zip codes overlay more than one county.

Taxes paid by mail, using a bill with an incorrect county code, could go to a county other than where the taxpayer resides, auditors say, although the mistake would not prevent the DMV from mailing back vehicle tag stickers.

The auditors also say DMV lines are likely to be longer in November because taxpayers whose bills have incorrect county codes or an error in the name will have to go to a DMV office to get the corrections made.

Gaulden wrote in his e-mail that “Many of the address issues and issues related to owner information have been resolved with counties.” He said the DMV does not expect longer lines as a result of the problems with the November reports.

Go Upstate

-- Anonymous, October 16, 2002