Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: If you could describe your experience at the DMV in one word, what would it be?
Bradley George: Wait, wait, wait.
Larry: A horror show.
Pretive: Obviously not good.
Nathan: Strenuous.
Anisa Khalifa: Like death and taxes, waiting at the Department of Motor Vehicles is something we all must endure. In the iconic movie Beetlejuice, there鈥檚 even a DMV-like office in the afterlife.
(SOUNDBITE FROM BEETLEJUICE)
Unidentified Voice 1: You don鈥檛 have an appointment, do you?
Unidentified Voice 2: Well, we didn鈥檛 know how to make one.
Unidentified Voice 1: You鈥檒l have to wait if you don鈥檛 have an appointment.
Unidentified Voice 2: An appointment with who?
Anisa Khalifa: You know the stereotypes. Crowded waiting rooms. Overworked employees. Very little patience. And in fairness, depending on where you live in the country, none of that may actually be true. But here in North Carolina鈥�
(SOUNDBITES FROM NEWS BROADCASTS)
Unidentified Anchor 1: Renewing your license can be a pain, with long lines and delays at the DMV鈥�
Unidentified Anchor 2: Appointments for Charlotte-area DMVs are booked out three months鈥�
Unidentified Anchor 3: Massive delays affecting hundreds of thousands of people across the state.
Anisa Khalifa: It鈥檚 a major problem. And in an era where government efficiency is all the rage, it鈥檚 generating talk of some dramatic solutions鈥�
Bradley George: You know what? We鈥檙e just gonna privatize the whole thing.
Anisa Khalifa: I'm Anisa Khalifa. This is the Broadside, where we tell stories from our home at the crossroads of the South. This week: contributor Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek follows the quest to fix North Carolina鈥檚 DMV, and finds out what that means for anyone who just needs a new drivers鈥� license.
(SOUNDBITE FROM BEETLEJUICE)
Unidentified Voice 1: Number 54,000,601.
Unidentified Voice 1: Well, looks like I'm next!
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: When my husband and I moved to North Carolina in 2021, we did all the basic things you have to do in order to start a new life. We found a place to live. Set up utilities. And for the most part, we got all our administrative tasks checked off. But then a few months later, midterm elections rolled around. And I realized: oh. I鈥檓 still registered to vote in Florida. So I Googled 鈥榬egister to vote in North Carolina,鈥� and found that DMVs in the state automatically register you to vote when you get a new license. Which I needed to do, anyway. How convenient, I thought, as I landed on the web page for new drivers license appointments.
Except鈥� there weren鈥檛 any. Every day, for about 3 months, I鈥檇 hop on the website and check for an opening at my local office. And there was nothing. I only got my license after taking the day off work to drive to a county about 90 minutes away. It was a terrible experience. But one I mostly forgot about until recently, when I started to notice something strange on drives by my local DMV: lines. Long lines. And one day, I parked my car, got out and started asking questions.
OK, so it鈥檚 about 6:45. And I鈥檓 looking at this line outside a DMV in Cary. And it is about 1,2,3鈥�. About 32 people deep. How early did you guys wake up?
Dave: 5:45.
Jennifer: 5:45 am. But we came two days ago at noon and we were told that there were over 100 people in line and that there was no point in us getting in line.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: One woman told me that the line had started to form at 3 in the morning. Others brought fold-out lawn chairs to sit on, and one person was even asleep.
I stopped by the DMV again in the early afternoon, and people were still waiting.
Paul: One of their employees said they were booked, the best time to come back was tomorrow at 5 am.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: How long have you been here?
Nathan: This is my third day here but I鈥檝e been here since 10 o'clock today.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: So you鈥檙e doing a walk in. You didn鈥檛 make an appointment online?
Nathan: No, I didn鈥檛 see a point. It鈥檚 four months out.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Turns out, my experience with North Carolina鈥檚 DMV? Was not isolated. In fact, it may have gotten worse. So why is this happening?
Bradley George: Well, there are some clues.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: 吉彩网网站 reporter Bradley George has been investigating the problem for months now. He鈥檚 also had some personal experience with the topic.
Bradley George: I moved back to North Carolina from Florida in 2022.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: What was that like?
Bradley George: Well, I remember going to get my driver's license. And I had to wait probably about two hours. Um, so it was just a, just kind of a chaotic situation.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Bradley says clue number one is aging infrastructure. During the pandemic many states, like California, expanded online services to limit in-person visits and wait times. But in North Carolina a lot of transactions still have to be done in-person.
Bradley George: And that's because there is an outdated mainframe computer system that the state uses for most of its, uh, DMV recordkeeping. So the state is trying to transition to something that's more modern, a cloud-based system. That will allow them to offer more transactions online. But that transition's still happening.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Clue number two? Not enough DMV workers.
Bradley George: Well, a lot of government agencies, state and federal, uh, since COVID have had staffing issues where people are leaving for better paying jobs. Now in rural parts of the state, you also have places where driver's license offices have shut down. Because maybe there was one person working in that office and they've done their 25, 30 years with the state and they've retired. And there's no one there to take over for them.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: And the final clue? Population growth. And the DMV, led by Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, hasn鈥檛 been able to keep up.
Wayne Goodwin: And in the last 20 to 25 years, we've had about 2 and a half million people come to the state new, in addition to the folks that are already here, and we have roughly the same number of employees.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Has there been any sort of movement to try to get more DMV employees?
Bradley George: Commissioner Goodwin has certainly talked about that but It's up to the General Assembly to approve the funding for the various state agencies, including DMV. So it's in their court for the lawmakers to decide whether or not those positions will get filled.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Last year, the Department of motor vehicles requested funding to hire an additional 80 employees to help get a handle on the situation. After some deliberation in the Republican-led state legislature, they ended up getting zero.
There are some stop gap solutions floating around. The state is setting up kiosks at select locations in the Triangle and Charlotte areas where residents can renew drivers licenses, no appointments or wait times required. But the larger issues have people on both sides of the political aisle frustrated. And some lawmakers have been exploring a more dramatic solution.
Bradley George: There's a committee in the legislature that has grilled the DMV commissioner, Wayne Goodwin, several times, and last year they actually requested some researchers at UNC Greensboro and NC State look at some options for maybe privatizing the DMV.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: That study came out last fall. And Bradley was the first reporter to get his hands on its findings.
Bradley George: I was convinced in my own little way that this might be just a little bit of a of a blockbuster would be an exclusive for 吉彩网网站 would get some play, you know, on social media. People would be curious about it. And I finish the story. Still feeling great鈥�
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: But on the same day that Bradley鈥檚 article was published鈥� there was another, you know, small story that came out of North Carolina.
(SOUNDBITES FROM NEWS BROADCASTS)
Unidentified Anchor 4: We are staying on top those some bombshell allegations today鈥�
Unidentified Anchor 5: The Trump-backed candidate for North Carolina governor, Mark Robinson, has made dozens of disturbing and damning comments on a porn website..
Bradley George: So my story basically got crushed.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Awkward timing aside, the findings were interesting. One option in the report? An expansion of partial privatization. Which isn鈥檛 really a new concept. Some parts of North Carolina鈥檚 DMV are already privatized.
Bradley George: When you go to get a license plate, that's an independent business run by someone who has a contract with the state. When you get your safety inspection or your emissions inspection, you're going to an auto repair shop that also has a contract with the state.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: But what would happen if all of the DMV was privatized? In a surprising twist, the study noted that total privatization had been tried in another place with a similar population size...
Bradley George: 鈥奡o in the mid-90s, New Jersey experimented with privatizing every service that its state DMV offered and, um, it didn't go too well.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: After the break鈥� New Jersey鈥檚 DMV experiment. And why what happened in Jersey might just stay in Jersey.
Larry Higgs: Let me just do one thing quickly鈥�
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: This is Larry Higgs.
Larry Higgs: 鈥奍 had to throw the cat out, because he has chewed through wires on multiple pieces of equipment, including my wireless router. And I think there's a picture of that router in a Verizon manual somewhere.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: In addition to being Verizon famous, Larry is probably New Jersey鈥檚 most well-known transportation reporter. He currently covers the beat for NJ.com and the Star-Ledger. And while he didn鈥檛 cover the privatization of New Jersey鈥檚 DMV鈥� he certainly lived鈥攁nd drove鈥攖hrough it.
Larry Higgs: When they privatized it was a horror show. Everyone had a horror story.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Much like North Carolina today, in the early 1990s, New Jersey DMV services were partially privatized. The parts run by the state were overseen by two separate agencies. At times, it was confusing鈥� and a little inefficient. So the governor found a solution.
Larry Higgs: And this was a Republican administration that said, well, we can save money, lay off people, get cheaper workers by privatizing all of them. The agencies were privatized in 1996 and that was designed to try to save $4 million by privatizing 23 state run agencies.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: The operation to privatize the New Jersey DMV took a few years. But soon enough, the changes started to be felt by New Jersey drivers, including Larry.
Larry Higgs: 鈥夾nd it was a resounding flop. Uh, there were long lines. There were customer complaints. You kind of either knew from your neighbors or anecdotally when to go.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: And just like North Carolina, the New Jersey DMV also had some major infrastructure issues鈥�
Larry Higgs: And that was one of the other problems with our DMV is they were operating on a very archaic computer system with a mainframe.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: They hired the company 3M to update their program.
Larry Higgs: They called it the Matrix program.
(SOUNDBITE FROM THE MATRIX)
Morpheus: You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed believing what you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Larry Higgs: And to this day, I think they took the wrong pill. It was over budget, over cost. And finally 3M got bought out by another company. And the company that bought them out decided, we don't want to be in the business of DMVs anymore.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: The company canceled the contract and walked away. Lawsuits followed. By the early 2000s, New Jersey鈥檚 experiment with a fully private DMV was on its way out, too. In 2002, New Jersey鈥檚 new, Democratic governor created a "fix the DMV" task force that issued a report. It highlighted the issues Larry brought up, as well as things like not having enough DMV employees and the issuing of fraudulent driver鈥檚 licenses. Fix the DMV concluded that total DMV privatization had caused 鈥減oor, disjointed and confused service delivery.鈥� And the following year, New Jersey restored the DMV鈥檚 functions back to the state.
Larry Higgs: When they went back to state control, it became not that bad. And I mean in Jersey that's a rave.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: But back in North Carolina, folks are not raving about the DMV.
Michael Lazzara: Well, as a transportation chair, you can imagine how many emails and phone calls that I started to receive in regards to, know, the level of service at DMV.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Republican State Senator Michael Lazzara is one of the DMV鈥檚 sharpest critics and was a leading voice behind the recent privatization study. Lazzara has tussled with state Democrats and the DMV Commissioner, who have both called for funding to hire more staff in the beleaguered office.
Michael Lazzara: 鈥奍n contrast to that, I don't believe that people is the solution.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: He and many of his colleagues argue that technology is the way forward.
Michael Lazzara: I think it starts with the idea that the back end systems, which involves three different sets of software platforms that are extremely old. 鈥奣hey're old, they鈥檙e antiquated and, uh, they need to be upgraded.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Some of those upgrades are happening right now and could improve service in the future. But in the meantime, the gridlock continues. And while Lazzara has disagreements with his Democratic counterparts, he recognizes a fundamental problem鈥攖he situation has become an embarrassment. For everyone.
鈥奍f lawmakers can't find a solution. Like, what does that say?
Michael Lazzara: Well, and that's exactly right. I believe we are going to solve it. That's 1 of my number 1 goals because it is the largest forward facing government entity that we have and we need to do a much, much better job at it. We don't need it to be a source of frustration. We have plenty of things that we could be frustrated about when it comes to government, and DMV is should not be 1 of them.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: That means that a radical idea like totally privatizing the DMV a la New Jersey in the 90s鈥� is likely off the table for now. And it seems like the study commissioned by the General Assembly has a similar view. It cautioned against a hasty implementation of privatization.
Richard Stradling: 鈥奍 think this study might, um, might have sobered them up a little bit about that.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Richard Stradling is a longtime transportation reporter at The News & Observer. He says, with some basic functions, privatization has its limits.
Richard Stradling: 鈥奩ou know, private business does everything better, right? That's that's the thought. Um, but you know, private business has a, has the option to walk away from something, you know, and this is not making, you know, we can't make money doing this, so let's, let's stop doing it. Let's just shut it down. Well, you can't do that with the DMV.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: And he suspects the DMV is already pushing the boundaries of government efficiency.
Richard Stradling: 鈥奡o the DMV points out that the state's population has grown by 2. 6 million since 2003. That's a 31 percent increase. And that in that time, they've been authorized to open three new offices and to hire zero new driver's license examiners. A driver's license examiner is the person that you meet with who takes your information and, and processes it and gets your license going.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: This year, the DMV is requesting 85 new positions. While Richard is hesitant to predict that a compromise is on the horizon, there does appear to be an opening. Because change is in the air. Republicans no longer have a supermajority in the state legislature. There鈥檚 a new governor in Raleigh. And in February, DMV Commissioner Goodwin said he would be stepping down.
And since you've been covering this issue for a while and you, you drive, you drove here in North Carolina to this studio, um, what do you think is actually going to take to fix this problem from just like a functional standpoint?
Richard Stradling: Well, I do think it's going to, going to take. Uh, lawmakers and the DMV or and the, and the administration, um, to work together. Um, right now, these last few years, if they've been sort of at loggerheads and, um, you know, there's been some animosity, I guess, between the lawmakers and the DMV and, uh, somehow they're going to have to get past that and sit down and work something out.
Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek: Until then, North Carolina drivers will just have to wait. And wait. And maybe? Wait some more.
Anisa Khalifa: During the course of our reporting, we reached out to DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin, but he declined to be interviewed. This episode of the Broadside was produced by Victoria Dom铆nguez Peek and edited by Jerad Walker. The rest of our team includes producer Charlie Shelton-Ormond and executive producer Wilson Sayre.
The Broadside is a production of 吉彩网网站 North Carolina Public Radio and is part of the NPR Network. You can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend. I'm Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week.