Why can't we fix DMV?

Standing in a line waiting for service, a store employee begged our patience, saying she would get to us as soon as she could.

“I’ve got plenty of patience,” the woman in front of me said. “I’ve been to DMV.”  I asked how long she had to wait. “Which time,” she responded? “I’ve been there three times to renew my driver’s license.”

I asked if she had made an appointment? “I did, the third time” she said. “And I still had to wait three hours.”

My son and daughter in law had a similar experience. When they moved to another state, they spent less than an hour changing both driver’s licenses and registrations for auto license plates, but when they returned to North Carolina they heard the horror stories and went online to make an appointment. The earliest one they could get was 60 days out, meaning they would be driving with out-of-state licenses and plates. Deciding to take their chances they waited in line two hours at DMV to get an appointment, then when the magic time arrived waited another three hours to get driver’s licenses, then another 90 minutes at a separate office to get new plates.

My license doesn’t expire for 90 days but I went online to get an appointment. There are 101 DMV driver’s license sites across the state. All but 16 had messages in red saying,” I’m sorry, we don’t have availability at this moment.” Clicking on the 16, every one said, “This office does not have any appointments available in the next 90 days.” What am I to do?

Problems with DMV are not new, but they grow worse every year. It is a plain failure of government to serve its people; reaffirming the belief that government doesn’t work.

“It’s as broken as everyone thinks it is,” new DMV Commissioner Paul Tine said shortly after being appointed. In fact, it is the primary reason Wayne Goodwin chose not to be reappointed after three years in the position. He could see it wasn’t going to change.

This is an embarrassment for our state. DMV impacts almost everyone over 16. What’s it going to take for fix DMV?

First, we don’t have enough DMV offices. With our fast-growing population (increasing almost 100,000 people per year) there are far too few offices, but that raises problem number two: Not enough employees.

Hear this clearly: the fault for your having to waste half a day to renew your driver’s license or conduct other business with DMV is not primarily the employees’ fault. Why would someone want to work for DMV? Every day they face the ire of people having to put up with inefficiency, waiting to accomplish a task that requires only a few minutes to achieve. These problems have been getting worse for years and nothing changes. What kind of morale would you bring to work each day knowing you had to face another bunch of disgruntled people and couldn’t do much about it?

Next, the IT for DMV is badly outdated, breaks down frequently and cannot handle the volume imposed on it. It feels like technology has changed most everywhere except DMV. They attempted opening self-service kiosks to help speed up service, but there are only 9 throughout the state and only 4 in Wake County to serve a population of 1.2 million people.

We must also reexamine the rules and regulations. For instance, you can renew your driver’s license online (which was not a bad experience), but the next renewal must be in person. Why? If you have no traffic violations or accidents why not allow continued renewal and save poor DMV employees and ourselves the time?  There are other simplifications and regulation changes that could be made.

The biggest reason why DMV isn’t more customer friendly is an insufficient will to fix it. Technically, this is an executive branch agency, but the blame resides clearly with our legislators. They’ve got the bucks. They just don’t have the will to provide the funding, the staffing, the technology and the offices to improve service to us. What is laughable is how many lawmakers complain about DMV. But complain is about all they do.

Our lawmakers’ clearly have adopted an “out-of-sight, out of mind,” philosophy, which might explain why they decided to move DMV headquarters from Raleigh to Rocky Mount. Who thought that was a good idea?

Lawmakers need to know they are sending a clear message to North Carolinians. They don’t care how long you must wait. They don’t care if you miss half a day of work. Or care about the cost to you or your employer. If they did, they would fix the problems…or at least put forth a strong effort.

North Carolina is better than this and we need responsive elected leaders who will fix something that affects so many. And do it now!

Tom Campbell is a Hall of Fame North Carolina broadcaster and columnist who has covered North Carolina public policy issues since 1965.  Contact him at tomcamp@carolinabroadcasting.com