By Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin
CHARLESTON, W.Va — Technology changes the way we do many things, from communicating with each other to paying bills. It also provides opportunity for government – especially state government – to be more efficient and accessible to its citizens. With this in mind, the West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has launched a new online-based initiative to help save West Virginians time traveling to and from regional offices.
DMV employees work hard to meet all of the requests at our regional offices, but it can be difficult to maintain reasonably short wait times – especially near renewal deadlines. To help save time, the DMV is now offering a way to make it easier to do business with an easily accessible online service portal that allows you to handle your DMV transactions from the comfort of your own home – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The DMV’s new online service allows West Virginia drivers to check their license status, request their driving record, renew their vehicle registration, and more. The online service portal also offers dealership services.
Since the soft launch of online vehicle registration renewals in early February, the DMV has seen an increase of 6 renewals for the month of February to 85 renewals in March. When the online portal was officially launched in April, renewals jumped to 1,415 by the end of the month, then to 2,171 in May.
The DMV online service portal guides customers through providing proof of personal property tax payment as part of the renewal process. To date, 44 of our counties allow residents to search online for proof of their personal property tax payment. More recently, Raleigh County was also added – covering an even larger portion of DMV’s customer base and increasing the total percentage of West Virginians with access to their tax payments to 91 percent. Additionally, 12 counties also allow customers to pay their personal property taxes online, with more counties to be added in the future.
As Governor, I am pleased the DMV is among the many West Virginia state agencies that have committed to making government services more easily available to all West Virginians. I encourage all residents to visit the DMV website and learn more about services offered online.
To access the DMV Online Services portal directly, go to http://go.wv.gov/selfservice.