Abolish the DMV? Hilton's Plan Faces Inland Reality

Steve Hilton, the former adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron and one-time California gubernatorial candidate, has reignited a perennial Sacramento debate with a characteristically blunt proposal: abolish the Department of Motor Vehicles entirely. In Hilton's telling, the agency is a relic of analog governance, a bottleneck of queues and paperwork that should be replaced by private-sector innovation and digital-first services. It is a message that plays well in tech-friendly corners of the state, but its reception in the Inland Empire is far more complicated.

For residents of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the DMV is not an abstraction. It is the office in San Bernardino or the crowded counter in Riverside, reached by long commutes and defended by limited appointment windows. The region's sprawling geography means that a trip to the DMV can consume half a workday, and for those without reliable broadband or a smartphone, the promise of a fully digital agency rings hollow. Hilton's vision assumes a connected, mobile population; the Inland Empire is still, in many pockets, neither.

The Inland Empire's Two-Speed Problem

The deeper issue is that the DMV does far more than issue licenses. It administers vehicle registration, identity documents, voter registration, and commercial driver credentials, functions that touch every household and every business in the region. Handing these to private contractors raises real questions about equity, data privacy, and accountability. A private firm chasing profit may serve the lucrative urban corridor well while neglecting the rural stretches of the desert and the mountain communities where physical offices remain the only lifeline.

Hilton is right that the DMV is overdue for modernization, and the agency has already moved toward online renewals and appointment systems. But abolition is a different matter entirely. The more plausible path is incremental reform, not demolition, and the Inland Empire's lawmakers would be wise to push for expanded hours, mobile service units, and better digital access before entertaining any wholesale dismantling. In a region where the DMV is a daily fact of life, the debate is not about ideology, it is about whether the next trip to the counter will be shorter than the last.