Officials under fire for private DMV

Calif. legislators get controversial perk

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Lawmakers can avoid the long lines plaguing California’s Department of Motor Vehicles offices by visiting an office near the Capitol not open to the public, a decades-old practice under fresh fire as wait times surge.

The office provides services for current and retired lawmakers, their staffers and some other state employees, the Sacramento Bee reported Thursday. DMV spokesman Artemio Armenta said that its primary purpose is to handle constituent requests that arrive on lawmakers’ desks and that the two-person staff handles 10,000 requests per year.

But one lawmaker said it shouldn’t provide extra perks for the Capitol community as regular Californians are forced to wait up to hours in line for services at their local office.

“I have gotten my registration and all that stuff the old-fashioned way like everybody else in my district,” Republican Assemblyman Jim Patterson told the Bee. “When you are living a public life the way most private people live, you’ll understand when taxes hurt and bureaucracies hurt.”

Patterson’s colleagues rejected his request to audit the DMV on Wednesday, and lawmakers have recently approved more money for the agency to deal with its exploding wait times.

DMV officials said the long lines are because of complications in complying with new federally mandated security upgrades for ID cards. In late 2020, airport security checkpoints will require cards that meet “Real ID” standards, and Californians are now beginning to get the updated cards.

Lawmakers have approved tens of millions of dollars to hire more workers and implement the rollout of Real ID. The DMV recently announced it would open more than a dozen offices on Saturdays.

Whether lawmakers and Capitol staffers should get access to a private DMV has been disputed before. Some people who work in and around the Capitol downplayed the office’s existence in response to the Bee article, saying it’s been known about for years. A 2006 Capitol Weekly article highlighted the debate over the office, referencing a small-government activist who criticized it for years.

The office has been open for decades, moving locations around the Capitol. At one point it was open to the public. Now, the office is unmarked at the end of a hallway in the Legislative Office Building, located across the street from the Capitol.

When a reporter stopped by Friday, the door was locked.

Armenta, the DMV spokesman, said the door is locked because the office handles cash transactions and holds people’s personally identifiable information. About 90 percent of the office’s work relates to requests from constituents who call their lawmakers over problems the local DMV branch might not be able to solve, he said.

“Often times it’s a conduit for constituent work,” Armenta said.

Richard Vogel The Associated Press People wait in line outside an office of the California Department of Motor Vehicles in Los Angeles. A special DMV office for legislators and others that is not open to the public has become a hot button.