Mitch, thanks for posting.

I ran into Bill Hyatt at a meeting yesterday and he updated me on what's going on. Before that I was under the impression that it was going to be an automatic credit when you buy next year's license. (Sorry for any confusion on other posts where I indicated that it was an automatic credit on next year's license....I was misinformed).

We (DEP) do not run the website that you buy your license from. It's a vendor that handles licenses for a number of different states. When I talked to Bill about it he advised me that the vendor would charge the state a large amount of money to rewrite the program to include the credits for overpayments this year, except it would probably cost more to reprogram than the total amount of license fee credits. Obviously that's not going to work. Apparently it is easy to increase or decrease the license pricing on the computer, but not so much for the credit. So, they are cutting out the vendor for the credits and handling it in-house. That's why you have to go to one of the 5 field offices or if you prefer, you can mail the form in to get your credit.

I know, it's not perfect.....but it doesn't make any sense to pay more for the computer programming than the total amount of credit that is going to be applied.

We (DEP) did not implement the license fee increases last year. That was done by the legislature. The department had been working towards an online licensing system for a number of years and finally got it off the ground and operational....then the increases were thrown in, then they were changed.

And if you come to Harwinton (Western District HQ) to get your credit....and you see the grey Crown Vic in the driveway, stop and say Hi.