EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) – If you recently renewed your car registration for the year 2027, you may have received a registration tag for 2026 in the mail. A KRDO13 viewer tells us they opened up an envelope for the registration they recently paid for and found the same sticker they already had.

We asked the Colorado Department of Revenue what happened at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

We have confirmed that the incorrect registration tabs were sent due to an issue stemming from the system upgrade and El Paso County’s unique process with this vendor. While unforeseen issues can arise with a project of this magnitude, the positive outcome is that our established processes with county partners quickly identified and corrected the problem for our customers. Customers who received the wrong year tabs are being mailed replacements; the final batch of new tabs was sent out today and should arrive shortly.

– Jennifer Giambi DMV Communications Supervisor

KRDO13 spoke with the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder, who says right after his office found out about this issue, they immediately notified the state.

“Last month, on February 18th, the State of Colorado Department of Revenue, the motor vehicle division, launched a whole brand new motor vehicle software platform where we went from drives to Core 21. So that affected all 64 counties. So, you know, here in El Paso, we were shut down for five days, just getting things ready. We’re the largest, most populous, and of course, you know, probably doing the most registrations in the state of Colorado. We wanted to make sure everything was good, however, and sadly is when you sit there and you do a statewide push is that you know there’s going to be some hiccups,” explained Steve Schleiker, El Paso County Clerk and Recorder.

Schleiker says sadly that El Paso County faced a hiccup.

“So I just want to share that this is a very easy fix, and I do not want to sit there and penalize anybody for a governmental mistake. So this is something that we do not want to sit there and burden the citizens. Just reach out to us and give us a call at 719-520-6240, and just let us know,” said Schleiker.

Schleiker also noted that if you got the wrong tag, you can also email his office. He said to reach out with your name and license plate number, and his office can verify that you have already paid for your registration renewal. The El Paso County Clerk and Recorder says corrected tags will be sent at no cost to residents, but he emphasized that the error was caused by the Department of Revenue during programming and the launch of Core 21.

He pointed to an additional mix-up that you may receive in your mailbox. Schleiker says the state forgot to exclude El Paso County from its registration reminder notifications.

“We have a third-party vendor, and we send out courtesy notices, which is not a requirement by the state of Colorado, but we send a courtesy notice out to those every single month, about 400,000 each month, letting them know, hey, your vehicle is due to be registered,” Schleiker continued, “So what happened is our vendor not only mailed them out, but the state made the mistake of not excluding El Paso County. So now we’re going to have vehicle owners who are going to get dual notices. And I just want to sit there and share. It’s my apologies, but you’re not going to have to pay twice.”

Overall, the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder said he was happy with the rollout of the new program and how it went. He said issues are being resolved in a timely manner.

He also encouraged residents to take advantage of the online portal with this new system.

“You can go out to the state’s website and set up your account. It’s going to require your information. You set up a password so that no one else can have access to it. And you could do all this stuff online, where you don’t have to come into a DMV branch. But I do understand a lot of folks, you have to come in if you’re doing title work, you know, just a number of different things. But you can also do that in this new platform, go out there and set up your own account, and you’ll get reminders and things like that,” shared Schleiker.

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