Not Tending to Basics

Check 5378 for $320 mailed on 8/5, bank account not cleared as of 8/21

The license and registration fees were due by August 22nd so I mailed the check to the DMV's Sacramento post office box two weeks early.

I do pay bills electronically, but for payments that have tax consequences (part of the license renewal is personal-property tax, which may be deductible on Schedule A) I like to write an old-fashioned check. It's nice to have a copy of the cancelled check to show the IRS in the event of an audit.

Aware of the security risk from dropping off a letter at a mailbox, I mailed the DMV payment from the Foster City Post Office on August 5th.

On August 21st I checked the bank account online. The check still had not cleared the bank.

The problem lay with the DMV cash receipts system or the U.S. Postal delivery system, but it wouldn't be wise to invite a late-payment penalty and try to appeal it. So I paid the fee on 8/21 directly using a Discover credit card.

Sure enough, California and the USPS didn't lose the check. It was deposited on August 31st (above) and I have a credit balance that I hope will get back in a month or so.

People disagree about many aspects of government, but the vast majority, I suspect, want government systems to work quickly, effectively, and honestly. An accurate cash receipts system is basic to organizations, and the structural principles were known decades before electronic data processing (EDP) was ubiquitous.

I worry about a California government that's always working on the next big thing and not tending to basics, like handling checks or verifying unemployment claims (EDD fraud is $32 billion). No one pays the penalty for the systems falling apart, and no one gets promoted for tending to them.