Vehicle Administration

Carroll sheriff's deputies will crack down on county motorists who fail to register their vehicles and obtain Maryland license plates, Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning said yesterday.After an initial public awareness campaign -- about 30 days -- deputies will concentrate on vehicles with out-of-state plates and check to see where the owners live, the sheriff's office said.State law requires new residents to register vehicles and obtain a Maryland driver's license within 30 days.The county is taking advantage of first-time state grants to pay overtime costs for the crackdown, said Maj. John Stultz, operations commander for Tregoning.

Carroll sheriff's deputies will crack down on county motorists who fail to register their vehicles and obtain Maryland license plates, Sheriff Kenneth L. Tregoning said yesterday.After an initial public awareness campaign -- about 30 days -- deputies will concentrate on vehicles with out-of-state plates and check to see where the owners live, the sheriff's office said.State law requires new residents to register vehicles and obtain a Maryland driver's license within 30 days.The county is taking advantage of first-time state grants to pay overtime costs for the crackdown, said Maj. John Stultz, operations commander for Tregoning.

Maryland new-car dealers closed out last year with a rally that brought full year sales very close to the 1997 level, according to figures released yesterday by the Motor Vehicle Administration.New-vehicle sales jumped 9.8 percent in December over sales the previous December, pushing sales for the full year to 328,132. That represents a decline of less than 1 percent from total sales in 1997.Bruce Rogers, president of Sherwood on the Shore, a Ford and Lincoln Mercury dealership in Berlin, Worcester County, and a director of the Maryland New Car and Truck Dealers Association, said sales were particularly strong in the last week of December.

The state Motor Vehicle Administration office in Glen Burnie used to drive customers nuts with long lines, bad directions and grouchy faces on either side of the counters.But the atmosphere during recent visits has seemed almost jovial. Could the DMV of Doom have changed its ways?"It's really a lot better than it used to be," said Tony Gaegler, 32, of Catonsville. He and his two children, ages 6 and 4, had been waiting about 30 minutes to get tags and title for his new car."The last time I was here, it was just horrible," he said.

RESIDENTS of Carriage Hill Village Apartments in Randallstown woke up to a most unpleasant holiday surprise Dec. 15 -- courtesy of the Motor Vehicle Administration and Baltimore County police.From 5 a.m. until 11 a.m., a squad of seven police officers and five MVA investigators set up shop outside the apartment complex, dispensing tickets and checking out-of-state plates in the lot in search of proof of car insurance and legal licenses.Scofflaws had to pay towing costs, impound fees, tickets and fines, which totaled hundreds of dollars for some.

LISTEN TO the comments of those leaving some branches of the state's Motor Vehicle Administration this year, from customer service cards from MVA centers throughout the state:"I feel as if I have entered the circus," one customer wrote."

ADD ONE MORE thing to that short list of certainties in this life, next to death and taxes: some sort of wacky experience while attempting to register a car, get a driver's license or obtain plates at the Motor Vehicle Administration.With this in mind, your Intrepid One recently embarked on a mystery tour of some of the state's MVA locations, staking out the public offices where such driver-related business is conducted in search of a flavor of the process. Then, an internal (and very informal)

Maryland's retail auto industry started the new year the way it ended 1995 -- sputtering along in low gear.New car and truck sales were off 18.1 percent last month compared with January 1995, according to registration figures released yesterday by the Motor Vehicle Administration.The blizzard of Jan. 6-7 was the major factor. Most dealerships in the state were closed two or three days as they tried to dig out from snow that reached above the bumpers on most vehicles on their lots.But some dealers saw the snow as a blessing.

Asking most drivers about a trip to the Glen Burnie headquarters of the state Motor Vehicle Administration used to be like asking Dante how he liked his trip through the Inferno.No more. Gone from the ground floor is the brown-tan-beige color scheme that could make you queasy. Eighteen months of renovation and $5 million have turned the MVA headquarters into a more civilized and organized government office.The ground floor now is a 40,000-square-foot, 42-window registration center that can handle 90 percent of ordinary transactions.

Maryland's already sputtering new car sales industry suffered another setback last month as sales dropped further than those for the rest of the nation.New car and truck sales fell 18.4 percent in June, according to figures released yesterday by the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration. For the nation as a whole, new car and light truck sales were down less than 1 percent."We're seeing a lot more cautious buyer today," said John Fratta, general sales manager at Ernie Swanson's Oldsmobile on North Crain Highway in Glen Burnie.