Emergency funding for MNLARS was appropriated early in the 2018 legislative session. The law making that appropriation also created this steering committee.
The enabling legislation for this steering committee indicated that the senate chair of the committee with jurisdiction over transportation finance was to convene the initial meeting of the committee by May 1, 2018. The committee is required to meet at least once each quarter.
This committee expires upon full implementation of MNLARS; this committee must determine when MNLARS is fully implemented.
A May 2019 report from the Governor's Blue Ribbon Council on Information Technology recommended that the MNLARS system be decommissioned and replaced with an off-the-shelf software package. The legislature responded to that recommendation by creating the new VTRS system, MNLARS' replacement, to be launched by the end of 2020. It will be fully implemented, and MNLARS fully decommissioned, by the fall of 2021. As such, the MNLARS Steering Committee was replaced by the Driver and Vehicle Systems Oversight Committee.