New Mexico Motor Vehicle Division
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For information on all current New Mexico motor vehicle services, including vehicle titles, registrations, driver's exams and licenses, commercial services, boat licensing, special plates and many others, please visit the N.M. Motor Vehicle Division Official Website: |
(Note: Neither the New Mexico Transportation History Project nor its volunteers are in any way associated with the N.M. Motor Vehicle Division.) |
| A Brief History of New Mexico’s Motor Vehicle Division |
Albuquerque, Las Vegas and Santa Fe all required the licensing of motor vehicles at the municipal level beginning in 1910, with Raton following suit in 1911. The New Mexico Territorial government never required such licensing, but once statehood was achieved in 1912 the First State Legislature passed a law mandating the licensing of motor vehicles at the state level. The Automobile License Law of 1912 vested the responsibility for automobile registration with the office of the Secretary of State. This office accepted applications and fees, and issued registration certificates and license plates. The fees collected were turned over to the State Treasurer at the end of the fiscal year, where they were credited to the state Road Fund (less the Secretary of State’s expenses of administering the law). Antonio Lucero was the Secretary of State 1912-1918, succeeded by Manuel Martinez 1919-1922 and Soledad C. Chacón 1923-1926. [Official New Mexico Blue Book 1989-1990] While the Automobile License Law of 1912, Sec. 1, paragraph 2, expressly allowed municipalities to continue licensing motor vehicles owned by residents of their own cities, the subsequent 1913 Motor Vehicle Law, Sec. 8, reversed that stance and explicitly prohibited municipalities from requiring any license in addition to the state license. As provided for by a later act of the New Mexico state legislature [Laws of 1923, Chapter 96, Section 1], the responsibility for motor vehicle licensing was transferred from the Secretary of State’s office to the State Comptroller’s office effective April 16, 1923. R.H. Carter was the Comptroller at the time of this transition. [Santa Fe New Mexican, April 27, 1923, p.5 c.2] Concurrent with the transfer, the Motor Vehicle Department was established as an office under the State Comptroller. [Motor Vehicle Register 1923, July 1, 1923, title page.] At the time of the transfer many, if not most other states still placed this responsibility with their own Secretaries of State. New Mexico Secretary of State Soledad C. Chacón recommended in 1926 that the function be returned to her office, but the recommendation was never acted on. [Report of the Secretary of State [Soledad C. Chacón], Thirteenth and Fourteenth Fiscal Years, (Fifteenth Fiscal Year from July 1, 1926 to December 1, 1926) 1925-26, last page. (FY 1925, FY 1926, FY 1927. The rather convoluted title of this report was a result of the 1926 change of the Fiscal Year from December 1 – November 30, to July 1 – June 30.)] The licensing authority stayed with the State Comptroller for a number of years, and during that time the Motor Vehicle Register books and the envelopes in which license plates were mailed to automobile owners showed the return address as being that of the State Comptroller. [e.g.: Motor Vehicle Register 1923, title page, R.H. Carter; 1928 Motor Vehicle Register, title page, Gilberto Mirabal; Motor Vehicle Register 1931, title page, J.M. Lujan, State Comptroller and Manuel Gallegos, Motor Vehicle Commissioner; 1932 license plate mailing envelopes, J.M. Lujan, State Comptroller; New Mexico Automobile License Directory 1933, front cover, Juan N. Vigil, State Comptroller, and Diego Salazar, Motor Vehicle Commissioner; New Mexico Automobile License Directory 1934, front cover, Juan N. Vigil, State Comptroller, and Diego Salazar, Motor Vehicle Commissioner.] The Laws of 1935, Chapter 9, created the New Mexico Bureau of Revenue, headed up by a Commissioner of Revenue appointed by the Governor. The first Commissioner was James J. Connelly, who had been the State Treasurer prior to this appointment. (Connelly was succeeded a short time later by John D. Bingaman.) Along with several other state agencies, Section 1 of this law placed the Comptroller’s office and all of its functions under the oversight of the new Bureau of Revenue. The new organizational structure was reflected on the covers of the Automobile License Directories, beginning in 1935. [New Mexico Automobile License Directory 1935, front cover, John D. Bingaman, Commissioner of Revenue, and Diego Salazar, Motor Vehicle Commissioner; New Mexico Automobile License Directory 1936, front cover, John D. Bingaman, Commissioner of Revenue, and Diego Salazar, Motor Vehicle Commissioner; New Mexico Automobile License Directory 1937, front cover, John D. Bingaman, Commissioner of Revenue, and Diego Salazar, Motor Vehicle Commissioner; New Mexico Automobile License Directory 1938, front cover, John D. Bingaman, Commissioner of Revenue, and Diego Salazar, Motor Vehicle Commissioner.] The New Mexico Historical Review, Vol. XXIV, 1949, gives this concise synopsis of the evolution of the motor vehicle department: “Bureau of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division: Created in 1913 as a branch of the office of the Secretary of state, transferred in 1923 to Office of State Comptroller and in 1933 [sic] to the Bureau of Revenue. The department now [1949] consists of four divisions: Registration, Title, Inspection and Liens.” [The 1933 date is clearly in error, and should have been stated as “1935.”] Since the 1940's there have been several changes in organizational structure and lines of authority. The department’s publications show that as late as 1975 the organization was using the name Department of Motor Vehicles, but by 1978 it had changed to Motor Vehicle Division. [Department of Motor Vehicles 1975 License Plates and Stickers, Jerry Manzagol, Commissioner, publication DMV-P001, February 1975; and 1978 New Mexico License Plates, TMV-10263, June 1978, Jerry Manzagol, Director] As of 2017 the Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) is one of seven divisions within the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department (TRD). The Director of the MVD reports to the head of the TRD, who in turn is a Secretary in the Governor’s cabinet. |
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| Antonio
Lucero New Mexico Secretary of State 1912-1918 As the first state official assigned responsibility for registration and licensing of motor vehicles, Lucero oversaw the issuance of 904 license plates in 1912, a figure which had climbed to 17,838 by 1918, his last year in office. In all, Lucero and his staff registered and issued license plates to 53,858 vehicles during his tenure. Photo from New Mexico Blue Book 1917. |
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