ID problem is a real one, but you have 4 more years

Today’s question: My husband and I recently changed homes, and I ordered new drivers licenses to reflect our new address. The new licenses have a line across the top that reads NOT FOR FEDERAL IDENTIFICATION. I have been told that TSA will no longer accept these as identification when flying within the United States, and that we will have to take our passports with us every time we fly. Many people do not have passports, and they are expensive to obtain. Please tell me if this is something new and if so why hasn’t it been publicized? No need for alarm, madam. For one thing, this had been publicized. I can recall several stories in this newspaper on the subject.

This is what it says on the Arizona Department of Transportation website: “Current Arizona credentials will be sufficient until Oct. 1, 2020 to pass through airport security to board commercial aircraft as well as access restricted areas in federal facilities, nuclear power plants and military facilities.”

Until 2020 you can get a voluntary ID from ADOT.

You were supposed have a federal ID to travel by last January.

Our legislators, in what passed for their wisdom, had long before decided the that Arizonans would not comply with the Real ID Act of 2005, one of those laws passed in the wake of 9/11.

Those knuckleheads feared such an ID card would contain a chip that kept track of our movements and make us wear our underwear on our heads or something like that.

Eventually a deal was worked out that got us until 2020 to get the federal travel ID.