Story courtesy of SCVTV.

Sheriff Jim McDonnell is asking the Board of Supervisors to consider doubling the county portion of the vehicle license fee to $2, from $1, for personal vehicles and to $4, from $2, for commercial vehicles.

The increased revenues, paid by car and truck owners when they register or re-register their vehicles with the DMV, would be used “for the deterrence, investigation and prosecution of vehicle theft in the county,” according to McDonnell’s report to the board.

It’s scheduled for a vote Tuesday.

The county has imposed a $1 fee for personal vehicles since 1992, and a higher fee for commercial vehicles since 2001.

The county’s “Taskforce For Regional Autotheft Prevention,” or TRAP, “consisted of more than 50 investigators from law enforcement agencies throughout the county” when it was established in 1993. Since then, however, “TRAP has been reduced in size to stay within its operating budget,” McDonnell said in his report.

“The number of registered vehicles in the County has risen slightly over time, and the rising personnel  costs caused by simple inflation have far outpaced the growth of TRAP’s budget,” he said. “With the increased  funding, TRAP will be able to assign more investigators and prosecutors to the taskforce, thereby having greater effectiveness in combating vehicle theft.”

The Legislature authorized counties to raise their share of the VLF in 2013, and six other counties have done so, McDonnell said. They are Sacramento, Marin, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, San Mateo and Solano counties.