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1986–1988
The patronage system's end began in 1986, and it was announced as a service scandal as much as a political one: the Indianapolis Business Journal's retrospective states the sequence plainly — "Gov. Robert Orr began the hard work in 1986 to modernize the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles and remove it from the seedy grip of political patronage." The instrument was a five-member bipartisan Bureau of Motor Vehicles Commission, and in July 1986 the Kokomo Tribune reported what the commission intended: pilot branches opening the following January to test late hours, appointments and modern payment, and then the takeover itself — the commission "will take over the state's 187 politically controlled branches in July 1988." The report states the old order in one sentence: "Under the current system the branches are controlled by the political party of the governor. The branch manager often is the county chairman of that party, which benefits from the patronage jobs in branches and from contributions from some of the branch fees."
For South Bend the takeover's season is documented in this branch's own directory line. The directories of 1986 and 1987 — canvassed as the commission was standing itself up — still print the old form entire: "AUTOMOBILE LICENSE BUREAU, Mrs Jennette K Moeller Br Mgr, 333 S Michigan St," the party-era name and the party-era title, at the Michigan Street seat, on the same telephone the branch had carried since Main Street. In July 1988 the 333 South Michigan counter passed from the county organization to the state commission, its manager from a party appointee to a state employee, and the branch that crossed into the new order is this city's. The commission structure the 1980s built is the structure that still governs: the State Board of Accounts' review of the Bureau for fiscal 2007 describes the Bureau of Motor Vehicles Commission as five individuals appointed by the Governor to four-year terms, with the Commissioner of the Bureau as its chair. The counts of the system the commission inherited print as the sources give them: 187 "politically controlled" branches in the 1986 reporting; 189 branches in 1988 in the Business Journal's retrospective count. The two figures are printed side by side, each at its source, and the difference — a count of the political branches against a count of all branches, two years apart — is left as it stands.
What the takeover did not do is move any counter. The branch map the commission inherited was the patronage map, and South Bend kept its seat on it — at 333 South Michigan, and afterward at St. Joseph Street — on the full-service footing the Bureau's later notices document. A state law noted in the same retrospective requires at least one license branch in each of Indiana's 92 counties; St. Joseph County's floor has never been in question, and the county seat's branch has never stood on any closure list this record reaches.
Principal sources: Indianapolis Business Journal retrospective (October 7, 2022); Kokomo Tribune, July 11, 1986; State Board of Accounts, Bureau review, fiscal 2007; Polk city directories of South Bend, 1986 and 1987.