Increased driver, motor vehicle records fees proposed
The Transportation and Telecommunications Committee heard testimony Feb. 3 on a proposal to raise fees for certain driver and motor vehicle records maintained by the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

Columbus Sen. Mike Moser, sponsor of LB114, said the department would use the additional revenue to deploy an updated driver licensing system sooner than originally planned to avoid rapidly increasing costs.
The bill would raise the driver record abstract fee from $7.50 to $24 per record. A portion of the additional revenue would be credited to the state’s General Fund.
The fee for searching the driver record monitoring service would increase from 6 to 30 cents per record, and the fee for driver record header information — which includes name, address and date of birth, among other details — would increase from $18 to $30 per 1,000 records.
The fee for individual registration or title records would increase from $1 to $3 per record. For requests of more than 2,000 records, the fee would increase from $18 to $40 per 1,000 records. The same increase would apply to the fee for an extract of the entire file of all vehicles registered or titled in Nebraska.
The department estimates that LB114 would generate $12 million in total state revenue in both fiscal year 2025-26 and FY26-27.
DMV director Rhonda Lahm testified in support, saying the fee increase would allow the department to create an identity management system intended to combat fraud and finish the modernized driver licensing system by 2026 rather than 2032, saving an estimated $20 million.
She said part of the driver record fee increase would be directed to the General Fund to help offset the costs other state agencies would incur when integrating with the new driver licensing system.
Testifying in opposition to LB114 was Robert Bell on behalf of the Nebraska Insurance Federation. He said Nebraska insurance companies need access to driver records during the underwriting process and likely would pass on the higher fees to customers by raising auto insurance rates.
Although a fee increase may be necessary to upgrade DMV systems, Bell added, directing part of the additional revenue to the General Fund “seem[s] less about good governance and more about revenue generation for the government.”
The committee took no immediate action on the bill.
