Lawmakers, DMV spar over new law that doubles renewal period for drivers licenses

A provision in the new state budget designed to reduce the number of visits people must make to a Division of Motor Vehicles office has emerged as a source of tension between lawmakers and the DMV.

DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin says the change would put North Carolina out of compliance with federal law.

But lawmakers note that Goodwin asked for part of the change last February, as the General Assembly was preparing to come to Raleigh. Now Goodwin and his deputy, Portia Manley, have been summoned to appear before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions.

At issue is the amount of time before someone must renew their North Carolina drivers license. Under the budget that became law this month, licenses granted to drivers age 18 to 65 will not expire for 16 years, twice as long as the current renewal period of eight years.

Starting at age 66, drivers will still need to renew their licenses every five years, as they do now. The renewal period for commercial drivers licenses will remain at five years, or three years for school bus drivers.

In addition, the budget bill allows drivers to renew their licenses online every time, rather than having to visit a DMV office every other renewal as they must do now.

Both changes are set to go into effect July 1, 2024.

Goodwin says the provisions run afoul of the REAL ID Act, the law Congress approved in 2005 to tighten identification standards after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Nearly 3.7 million state licenses and IDs in North Carolina are now REAL IDs, meaning they meet the tougher identification standards spelled out under the federal law.

The law says REAL IDs issued by states are not valid for more than eight years. Goodwin says that allows states to regularly update their license designs to make them harder to counterfeit.

The REAL ID Act also requires that the photo on REAL IDs be replaced at least every 16 years. That requires an office visit, contradicting the budget bill provision that says they could be renewed online.

“This is an issue that seems simple on the surface, but it is incredibly complex,” Goodwin said in an interview with The N&O when the final draft of the budget was released late last month. “We would have liked to have the opportunity to be heard more on it, but we weren’t.”

DMV initially asked for longer renewal period

Lawmakers counter that Goodwin was heard, at least on the idea of doubling the renewal period from 8 years to 16. They note that the DMV’s legislative requests made last February included that provision to “help shorten lines and wait times” at drivers license offices.

Goodwin seemed to have forgotten that request, until after he spoke about the issue to members of the state Board of Transportation last Wednesday. When he told board members the DMV had not asked for the changes, Rep. Brenden Jones, a Republican co-chair of the House Transportation Committee who was listening via computer, fired off an email to board members.

“I couldn’t help but notice some misleading information from Commissioner Goodwin relating to the 8 to 16 years DL renewal legislation,” Jones began, while attaching a copy of the 52-page DMV legislative requests and directing board members to the paragraph about the renewal policy.

“It is my strongest hope that Commissioner Goodwin is politely mistaken,” Jones concluded, “and not trying to evade a poor decision by blaming the North Carolina State House and Senate.”

A few hours later, Goodwin conceded that Jones was correct that the DMV had requested the 16-year renewal period in February. But by May, after the proposal appeared in the House version of the budget, the agency had determined that it would violate both federal law and best practices for discouraging fake licenses.

“While this initially appears to be a good idea, upon further review, we discovered it did not align with federal requirements,” Goodwin wrote in an email to board chairman Michael Fox and Secretary of Transportation Joey Hopkins. “As this change is not in compliance with REAL ID, I respectfully request the legislature correct this.”

It’s not clear yet if or when lawmakers might do that. Wednesday’s House committee meeting will focus on what Goodwin knew about the license renewal provision and when he knew it, said Megan Kluttz, staff member for Rep. Jake Johnson, one of the committee’s co-chairmen.

“If it truly is in conflict with federal law, the committee hopes the commissioner can explain why he didn’t know it before asking for the legislation and how he communicated with which legislators about the possible conflict once he figured it out,” Kluttz wrote in an email.

The committee, like the rest of the General Assembly, is controlled by Republicans. Goodwin is the former state Democratic Party chairman and was elected Insurance Commissioner as a Democrat.

Lawmakers also question license printing contract

In addition to the renewal policy, the committee will ask Goodwin and Manley to explain a contract the DMV recently awarded to CBN Secure Technologies to print drivers licenses. The Canadian company has made drivers licenses and IDs for the state of Virginia for years.

The company that currently has that business in North Carolina, Idemia, objects to how the new contract was awarded, according to a DMV spokesman.

Leaders of the oversight committee say the DMV exempted the project from IT procurement oversight and did not use a competitive bidding process. In a press release Tuesday, they said they will also “pursue allegations that the vendor’s technology may not be able to produce driver’s licenses that comply with state law.”

“We have to wonder whether this contract is even valid if the company cannot produce a legal state driver’s license,” Johnson said in a written statement. “The speed and lack of oversight in awarding this contract also raise concerns related to the security of North Carolinians’ personally identifiable information.”

In his email to Board of Transportation members, Jones called the CBN contract “controversial” and questioned whether there was a connection between it and Goodwin’s opposition to the 16-year renewal period. Jones noted that CBN “prominently opposed” the longer renewal.

“I would hope that this recent deal is not affecting Commissioner Goodwin’s memory on the true origins of this legislation,” he wrote.

So far, lawmakers have focused only on the origins of the 16-year license renewal period. They haven’t made an issue of the other provision that allows people to repeatedly renew their licenses online, rather than appear at a DMV office every other time.

That provision, which Goodwin says doesn’t work for REAL IDs under federal law, was not part of the DMV’s legislative request in February.