by David Royse
The News Service of Florida
Nine lawmakers, including members of both parties, are going to bat for the private vendor that prints the Florida Drivers Handbook and asking the state Highway Safety agency to stop its court fight aimed at letting the contract lapse and opening the printing job up to other vendors or doing it in-house.
The lawmakers are also complaining about a decision by the same agency to discontinue a pilot project for online learner’s permit testing, which they was saving money. That testing program involved the same company that prints the handbook, and the lawmakers charged that dropping the other contract looked like “retribution” against the contractor, a company called the National Safety Commission.
And now, the issue has also gotten embroiled in election year politics, with the company’s owner, Kenneth Underwood, making a video that criticizes Attorney General Bill McCollum, a candidate for governor, for not pushing the highway safety agency to continue both contracts.
The handbook, which is used by new drivers studying the state’s traffic laws so they can take the driving test to get their license, has long been controversial. It is printed for free by the Ponte Vedra-based National Safety Commission under a 2005 contract with the state that allows NSC to run advertisements in the book in exchange for printing it.
NSC uses the handbooks to advertise its own driving schools. With nearly every teen trying to get his or her driver’s license reading the handbook, it’s a potentially lucrative deal because they are exposed to ads for NSC driving schools just when they’re looking for such schools. Owners of competing driving schools, however, have complained that it’s not fair for the state to be involved in essentially steering driving students to one company’s schools.
The Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has said that it plans to allow the contract to expire when it is up at the end of this year, but NSC challenged the state’s ability to non-renew the contract and won a round in court. The agency is now appealing.
The legislators, led by outgoing House budget chairman David Rivera (R-Miami) and including five other Republicans and three Democrats, wrote late last month to Department of Highway Safety Director Julie Jones and asked that the agency drop its appeal and keep the contract with Underwood’s company.
“You are spending even more tax dollars to appeal a case in which, if you are successful, will result in the further spending of millions of tax dollars to print handbooks. We ask that you immediately cease spending on this costly litigation,” the lawmakers said.
Jones responded that the main concern over the contract has been a public perception that the state endorses Underwood’s school over the others, and pointed out that an effort in the Legislature this past spring seeking to force the agency to continue the contract failed.
“It should be the state’s obligation to do what is in the best interest of all our customers and not what is financially beneficial to a single vendor,” Jones wrote back to the legislators.
The other program involved an online learner’s permit testing program, a pilot program being tried by the agency, that was canceled in June. The program allowed vendors to create Web-based tests that teens could use to take their written part of the learner’s permit test online, avoiding the need to go into the DMV to take it there.
Several companies were allowed to create online tests, but about half of the people who used it went to a site owned by Underwood’s company, which charges them to take the test.
The company, and now the lawmakers, complained that the online testing contract was canceled just hours after the court ruled in favor of the National Safety Commission in the handbook case.
“The timing of this cancellation is suspicious at best and, at worst, appears to be direct retribution against TNSC, who provides the lion’s share of the customers served under the Online Learner’s Permit Testing Pilot Program,” the lawmakers said in their letter to Jones.
They argue that agency figures show the program could save taxpayers money, although an agency spokesman said the department’s figures on that were misconstrued.
“It appears that while the Legislature has asked agencies to find any and all cost-cutting measures possible, your department is focusing on canceling contracts that save the state dollars and engaging in costly litigation to spend even more dollars,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter to Jones.
In her response, Jones said the agency has achieved millions in savings for taxpayers through efficiency measures, and that the decision to cancel the pilot online testing program was purely coincidental to the other controversy. She reminded the lawmakers that the agency told vendors back in June that it was ending the program this coming January.
Jones and other agency officials also say the savings that lawmakers say could be achieved are misleading. An agency document had looked at the possible savings of online testing, if it resulted in time savings for examiners, which Jones said never materialized.
Jones and other agency officials say they weren’t convinced that the online testing program was adequately preparing drivers. Many of the teens who took the online test later failed a follow-up quality control test.
National Safety Commission officials, however, countered that may not mean anything because the follow-up tests didn’t necessarily provide quality data for a variety of reasons. The company raised questions about the sample of who was re-tested, and whether they knew they were taking a follow-up quality check test that wouldn’t have any meaning for them as far as keeping their driver’s license, among other things. And while more than half of online test passers failed the follow-up, it’s not clear how many teens who took the test in person the first time would have failed a follow-up quality test.
Jones said that ending the online pilot won’t save the state money. “It will however ensure that the applicant’s knowledge is properly evaluated prior to licensure and will result in a net cost savings to the applicant, parent or guardian,” she wrote.
As for the handbook, the department has no plans for now to withdraw its appeal.
The agency does have some backers in the Legislature.
“I believe it should be a level playing field,” said Sen. Mike Fasano (R-New Port Richey). “The contract that was created years ago, before our present director was in the office, was created to benefit one company, and only one company and that was Mr. Underwood’s. ... In my opinion, it should be done in-house so there’s no fighting among the vendors.”
The ongoing spat has spilled over a bit into the governor’s race. Underwood recently created a YouTube video that complains that Republican candidate Bill McCollum claims to be interested in saving taxpayer money but has done nothing to keep the two contracts in question in force. Jones’ agency answers to the Cabinet, which includes McCollum as attorney general.
Underwood, a delegate to the 2008 Republican convention and a McCollum contributor as recently as last year, e-mailed around a link to the YouTube video encouraging people not to support McCollum, saying he could “assure you he will disappoint.”
In addition to Rivera, the other lawmakers who signed the letter to Jones were Republicans Erik Fresen, Dorothy Hukill, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, Stephen Precourt and Ron Reagan, and Democrats Joseph Abruzzo, Ron Saunders and Darren Soto. Underwood has also contributed to Rivera and Saunders.