Ohio Senate president calls for hearings into registration flap

The former public-safety director admitted the delay but took credit for the fix.

By Marc Kovac

COLUMBUS — The head of the Ohio Senate has called for legislative hearings after a newspaper report that the Ohio Department of Public Safety was slow to stop undocumented immigrants from registering cars and obtaining license plates.

Senate President Bill Harris, a Republican from Ashland, called the weekend report by The Columbus Dispatch disturbing, and he has directed the Senate’s Government Oversight Committee to schedule hearings on the issue.

“Ohio has a responsibility to ensure our state’s standards for granting driving privileges do not in any way threaten the public safety of others,” Harris said in a released statement.

The Dispatch reported that thousands of individuals were able to register cars and get license plates even though they did not have valid Social Security numbers or car insurance. It said outgoing Department of Public Safety Director Henry Guzman delayed a crackdown on a loophole allowing the practice for more than a year after hearing from mostly Latino-owned car dealers, financing and insurance companies and others.

But Guzman, who announced his retirement last month, told The Vindicator that he did not purposely or maliciously delay implementation of a new verification process. Instead, developing the new form took time to ensure it would withstand legal challenges.

And he said he was the one who pushed for the changes in the first place, altering a loophole in the registration process that had existed for years.

“I’ll take responsibility as director; there was a delay,” he told The Vindicator. “But the delay was not a malicious delay, and it was not a delay to cater to a specific group of the community just because I happen to be a Latino.”

In his announcement, Harris said Senate hearings would give lawmakers and other Ohioans an opportunity to better understand the issue. He’s also asked Sen. Shannon Jones, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, to pursue potential legislation “to curb the potential for vehicle- registration fraud in the future,” according to the statement.

“The delay in taking care of this problem administratively suggests that it should not be left to the whim of a single state agency director or one administration,” Jones said. “Legislation may be necessary to ensure public-safety laws are enforced.”

Guzman added in a released statement, “At this point, the policy has been in place for several weeks, and the department will be monitoring it to see what impact it has had on vehicle-registration transactions and will work with the General Assembly to move forward.”