George Valverde, DMV Director

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Political analyst Barbara O’Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and the Media at Sacramento State, says the agency appears to have improved its reputation and operations in recent years. She bases that on her personal experience as well as her political observations.

After a lifetime of frustrating visits to the DMV — including waiting at least two-and-a-half hours in line — it was “with great trepidation” that O’Connor went to a field office in Carmichael earlier this year for a license renewal. “They took me 10 minutes early; I was out in 5 minutes and everybody was cheerful,” O’Connor says. “It was an unbelievable change from past experiences.”

And San Jose Mercury News consumer columnist Dennis Rockstroh wrote in an August column: “When I first started this job more than four years ago, complaints about DMV service were at the top of the list. These days I receive very few complaints about the DMV.”

Many of the changes were under way before Valverde was appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger. But he has continued to implement and push for more. “These changes didn’t occur overnight,” Valverde says. “Clearly, Gov. Schwarzenegger brought a new focus on state government. He challenged all state departments to be governments of the 21st century. I think this department took that to heart.”

Valverde, 59, is a nearly lifelong veteran of California state government. He got his first job with the state about 30 years ago as an analyst with the Department of Health Services. Later he worked about 15 years as an analyst with the Department of Finance and then served as an undersecretary in the State and Consumer Services Agency.

Most of his past work has been in policy analysis. Heading the DMV is his first big managerial challenge, he says. The agency has a $1 billion budget and about 9,000 employees — about a third of them in the Sacramento headquarters.

Managing a large organization, he says, involves many of the same political skills he honed in his various policy jobs.

“Actually, I find that there’s a lot of similarities,” he says. “Regardless of the fact you may not have the direct supervisory responsibility (in an analyst job), you’re still trying to influence those that do, both from an operational standpoint, interacting with directors and their staff, and also on the policy side, when you’re interacting with legislators and their various consultants.”

As part of his management philosophy, Valverde has committed to personally visiting every one of DMV’s 170 field offices. He’s up to about 60 so far. He has also increased the agency’s interaction with charitable organizations, such as getting more headquarters employees to participate in a local March of Dimes walk. And the agency has improved the ability of Californians to participate in organ donation programs by providing a check-off box on driver license forms and transmitting that information directly to the registry maintained by Donate Live California. Since that program began in July 2006, the state has helped more than 1.6 million sign up to become donors.

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