Official: Add staff at DMV facilities

By John Fryar

The Daily Times-Call

DENVER — Adding staff to Colorado’s busiest driver’s licensing offices would reduce long waits more efficiently than reopening closed offices, Department of Revenue director M. Michael Cooke said Wednesday.

Cooke proposes to spend $1 million to add 25 new workers to existing driver’s license offices rather than reopen any of the more than 30 offices the state closed over the past five years when budgets were lean.

But Larimer County Republican Steve Johnson, who represents a Senate district where the state shut down licensing offices in Estes Park and Loveland about four years ago, isn’t on board with the proposal.

“I don’t think it’s going to fix the problem created by the closure of those (other) offices,” said Johnson, a member of the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee.

But Cooke said reopening offices would come with increased overhead costs. By comparison, she said, many of the busiest existing offices have enough space to accommodate additional employees without incurring that extra overhead.

“We’ve looked at the cost of reopening offices,” Cooke told the budget panel.

Johnson, a Fort Collins-area resident, has noted that his wife spent several hours this fall waiting to renew her license at the Division of Motor Vehicles office there.

Cooke acknowledged that the Fort Collins office has been understaffed and that the DMV sometimes has shifted staffers from Greeley to handle the crowds in Fort Collins.

Johnson said the state should make licensing offices accessible to as many people as possible and not just worry about shortening the lines at existing offices.

Johnson said it’s “not acceptable” that his Estes Park- and Loveland-area constituents still have to travel to Fort Collins or Longmont to get driver’s licenses.

“It’s not going to help by just putting a couple more people in the Fort Collins office,” Johnson said in an interview after Wednesday’s JBC hearing.

Cooke said the DMV has taken steps to trim wait times, but she said some offices still fall short of the goal of processing at least 75 percent of customers’ applications within 35 minutes.

Under the Revenue Department proposal, three of the 25 new employees would be assigned to one-person offices: one serving Craig, Meeker and Rangely; the second for Trinidad and Walsenberg; and the third for Steamboat Springs.

The other 22 would be distributed among the state’s busiest licensing offices. Cooke said those offices would be identified before July 1, when the 2007-08 budget year starts.

Boulder Democratic Rep. Jack Pommer, another JBC member, said in an interview that he hasn’t had many constituent calls about long waits to get driver’s licenses at the Longmont and Boulder offices.

But Pommer added that he’s heard about long waits at licensing offices.

Pueblo Democratic Sen. Abel Tapia, chairman of the budget panel, said long waits might be exacerbated by Revenue Department identification requirements.

JBC members did not indicate Wednesday whether they’d accept, reject or modify the Revenue Department’s staffing increase request. The panel is to present its own multibillion-dollar spending recommendations to the full Legislature in late March.

John Fryar can be reached by e-mail at jfryar@times-call.com.

Last edited February 26, 2007 - Note created January 5, 2007

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