New York Assembly Bill A00219

New York 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 1/8/25
• Refer: 1/8/25
• Refer: 1/7/26

Caption

Relates to the furnishing of registration information by the commissioner of the department of motor vehicles.

Summary

This bill amends the Vehicle and Traffic Law provisions governing how the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles may furnish vehicle registration information to a contracting party. Under current law, registrants are notified that their registration information may be shared and are told how to request deletion of that information from the contracting party’s files. The bill removes that registrant-notification and opt-out framework for future contracts and instead requires contracts to provide that the information be deleted from the contracting party’s files, subject to specified exceptions. The exceptions are expanded and clarified. Registration information may still be retained or used for manufacturer warranty and safety recall notices, statistical reporting and research that does not involve contacting individuals, removal of non-owner records from manufacturer files, use by government agencies and their agents, verification of personal information to prevent fraud, and use by insurers or self-insured entities for claims investigation, antifraud activities, rating, or underwriting. The bill takes effect immediately and applies only to contracts executed on or after the effective date.

Impact

The bill would change the rules in Vehicle and Traffic Law section 202 governing the DMV commissioner’s contracts with third parties that receive vehicle registration information. It shifts the law away from a registrant-driven deletion request process and toward a contract-based deletion requirement with enumerated exceptions, thereby affecting how personal vehicle registration data may be retained, used, and shared by contractors, manufacturers, insurers, government agencies, and businesses involved in fraud prevention and research.

Sentiment

No committee transcript or vote record is available, so there is no documented floor or committee debate to gauge support or opposition. Based on the text, the bill appears to be framed as a privacy and data-handling update that preserves several operational uses of registration data while tightening the default treatment of that information in contractor files.

Contention

The main policy tension is between privacy interests and continued access to registration data for legitimate business, governmental, and insurance purposes. Potentially contentious points include the removal of the explicit registrant notice and opt-out language, the breadth of the exceptions for fraud prevention and insurance underwriting, and the allowance for statistical and research uses so long as individuals are not contacted or reidentified. No specific legislators or stakeholders are identified in the available record.