Employees at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Virginia have been forced to count almost 300,000 pennies after a local resident decided to settle his beef with them.
Nick Stafford says that he decided to inconvenience the DMV by paying the $2,697.14 tax bill to register his two new vehicles purely in pennies. The pennies filled five wheelbarrows and ultimately had to be counted by hand by DMV employees for 12 hours after their coin-counting machine broke.
In a statement, Stafford said that he has been at war with the DMV since September when he tried calling the local office about where he should register his son’s Corvette as he owns multiple houses in the area.
After attempting to reach the Lebanon DMV, Stafford was redirected to a customer call center. Unhappy about this, he made a Freedom of Information Act request to get a direct line to the DMV. Upon receiving this number, he rang and was told the number wasn’t for public use. While he was eventually given his answer, Stafford went on to request the direct numbers of nine other local DMVs, reports the Bristol Herald Courier.
“It shouldn’t matter if you pay $300 per year in income taxes or pay $300,000 per year in income taxes like myself, because the backbone of a free democracy/republic begins with government transparency, period,” he said.
Note: Screencaps courtesy of the Bristol Herald Courier.
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