The DMV is the problem

The miseries of the California Department of Motor Vehicles have graduated from cliche to commodity. The Chronicle reports that the notoriously slow bureaucracy is investigating an Oakland startup for having the audacity to alleviate DMV-inflicted delays and tedium for a modest fee. What the DMV should be investigating, however, is how its dysfunction got severe enough to become a profit center.

With the department’s belated adoption of heightened driver’s license security standards making lines even more interminable, a company called YoGov is selling expedited appointments with friendly neighborhood DMV offices for $19.99 — and finding plenty of takers. A DMV official, noting that appointments are available to the public free of charge, told The Chronicle that the agency’s investigative unit is looking into YoGov.

The department’s travails concern the Real ID Act, passed by Congress following a 9/11 Commission recommendation to strengthen the security of driver’s licenses, which the hijackers had little trouble obtaining from California and other states. Some 12 years later, more than half the states had cooperated, but California was among the laggards whose old licenses will become invalid at airports and federal facilities in 2020. The state finally began offering Real IDcompliant licenses this year, causing a surge in demand and processing that pushed the DMV experience deeper into Kafkaesque territory.

For those showing up at the agency’s offices without an appointment, waits have multiplied, and stories of daylong DMV torture sessions aren’t hard to come by. Appointments make the process less painful but tend to be several weeks away; a recent search for a date with the DMV in San Francisco yielded a reservation nearly two months in the future. YoGov, meanwhile, promises an appointment within two weeks for 20 bucks, a feat its founder says it achieves by assigning employees to the inglorious task of scouring the DMV website for time slots.

In an effort to stem the delays, the DMV added some Saturday hours last month, a long-overdue development, and announced Friday that it would expand weekend service. It’s also in the process of hiring hundreds more employees. But it clearly hasn’t done enough.

The governor’s office and Legislature should be paying at least as much attention to the regrettable result as enterprising Bay Area entrepreneurs are. Bureaucracy entails unavoidable inconveniences, but it shouldn’t be an outright ordeal.

YoGov, which is offering more efficient government service to those who can pay for it, is certainly a flawed solution. But the problem here is the DMV.