LYNETTE YATES

It’s early morning at the vehicle registration office at the Warren County Courthouse, but it looks a bit like Scottsville Road at rush hour. Already a line has snaked outside the office and down the main hallway, nearly reaching the side entrance to the building.

Patience is in order these days at the county clerk’s office, and the reason is something called KAVIS (for Kentucky Automated Vehicle Information System).

KAVIS, it seems, might more aptly be called chaos for the disorder and confusion it has caused statewide since it was rolled out by the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet on Jan. 1.

Problems with incorrect tax information and outdated records have created gridlock for Warren County Clerk Lynette Yates and her counterparts around the state.

A system meant to be an upgrade from the AVIS that county clerks have been using for 40 years has instead downgraded the speed and efficiency of clerks’ offices.

“It wasn’t ready to be released,” Yates said. “County clerks around the state were telling them, but they released it anyway. There are too many bugs in it.”

The biggest bug, Yates said, is the incorrect tax information that KAVIS routinely generates.

“The taxing issues are stopping us,” she said. “There’s a lot of going back and forth between our office and the PVA (Property Valuation Administrator) office.

“There are no seamless transactions. What we’re normally used to doing is taking at least three times longer.”

Thus the long lines, which lead to grumbling customers who only want to renew their vehicle registration.

“It’s frustrating when you want to help a customer and can’t,” Yates said.

Yates said her office was processing about 300 titles per day before KAVIS. After the rollout of the new system, that number went down to “less than 50” at first.

That reduction can erode tax collections, Yates explained.

“It affects income to the county and the state,” she said. “My January numbers are awful right now.”

Yates said her office had built up a backlog of more than 1,000 transactions but is “working through a few a day” to get that number down.

Efforts by KYTC staff to correct problems with KAVIS can sometimes create more issues, Yates said.

“You fix something and it breaks five other things,” she said.

The problems with KAVIS led Yates to suspend taking any March renewals for now and concentrate on January and February renewals.

Still, Yates sees progress and is hopeful that KAVIS will be a good system once KYTC works out the bugs.

Yates said the online renewal system is working and that progress is being made in the in-person system.

“Yesterday, we did about 230 renewals,” she said. “That’s the best day we’ve had (since KAVIS was launched). Maybe we’re turning the corner.

“Eventually, if they get it all right, it’s going to be a great system.”