BOSTON — Officials within the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles had been aware for years of a backlog in processing of out-of-state driving convictions.
That’s according to testimony Tuesday from state officials during a legislative oversight hearing prompted by a June 21 crash that killed seven motorcyclists. Lawmakers want to know why the registry failed to act on information that the Massachusetts driver involved in the New Hampshire crash had previously been arrested for drunken driving in Connecticut.
Brie-Anne Dwyer of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation testified she alerted officials in April to the existence of more than 12,800 unprocessed notices of out-of-state driving violations and recommended transferring responsibility for those notices to another division within the agency.
Another registry official told lawmakers he discovered a three-year backlog of unprocessed notifications shortly after starting his job in 2016.
