The leader of North Carolina's Division of Motor Vehicles says his agency is rapidly filling open positions to address long wait times at DMV offices.
Commissioner Paul Tine says he's making a big push to reduce vacant positions at DMV offices. A recent report from State Auditor Dave Boliek found that 160 of the agency’s 710 driver license examiner jobs are vacant, and only one person was working in Harnett County.
But Tine says that number has improved dramatically as the agency converts hard-to-fill temporary positions to permanent jobs with full state benefits.
"We are actually down to about 3% vacancy rate in our examiners, which is just unheard of in state government, to have it that low," he said. "We've recently gotten some new positions, and our goal is to get those out in 30 days."
The legislature recently funded new DMV positions and new offices in four locations across the state. Tine says he's hopeful the changes will mean shorter wait times. Tine spoke about the agency's efforts, and his reaction to Boliek's audit findings, on the latest episode of the WUNC Politics Podcast.
This conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
You're a few months now into the job. What changes have taken place, or are currently in the works, to address the long lines and wait times that are plaguing the agency?
"We have about 120 projects that we're working on right now. We've already done a few. We have a new way that we deal with folks coming in line, so this doesn't speed things up, but it makes their wait a little bit better. They can put their telephone number in, and we text them when we're ready for them, and so they can go and wait anywhere. It gets them out of the heat. That was a big one.
"We talk a lot about the examiners and having more of them, but we also have to be more efficient, so we've got things from our scanners — improving those to be able to move things more quickly — and change our website so people have better information when they show up."
How much improvement do you think can be made with the resources you have, without additional funding or staffing resources that might take action from the legislature?
"We're pretty needy right now. One of the people often ask me, 'what's the most surprising thing?' And I think one of the most surprising things that I've found is how little fat we have in the organization: We collect billions of dollars of funds for the state. We have a $170 million budget. We're going to need some investment, not just people out in the field, but support people and project managers that will allow us to transform the organization."
State Auditor Dave Boliek is making the case in his audit that DMV should be separated from the Department of Transportation, arguing that it needs to be able to do things like its own strategic planning process and make its own budget request to the legislature. What's your view on that change?
"We just moved out License and Theft (Bureau) since I started. That has been a huge distraction. It's been difficult on the HR side, on the system side, on the processes side, where there's still some confusion from our customers as to who they talk to. So if you took us out of DMV, all our communications, our HR, our budget, our facilities, security: all these items are serviced by DOT, not DMV. So we'd have to rebuild all of those systems ourselves internally. It would be a huge distraction when we have over 100 projects that we know that we need to do."
In the short term, what's your advice for someone who needs to visit a DMV office right now or in the coming months, and is having trouble getting an appointment?
"See if your service is available online, and keep paying attention as we move more and more items to online. As far as appointments are concerned, we can't possibly make enough appointments to meet the level of demand that we have, and quite frankly, the fastest way to serve folks is to have them come in through the offices without appointments, and move them through as quickly as we possibly can.
"If you don't need your REAL ID immediately, don't come in right now. Wait until another few months. We're going to get better and if you do need to come in, come in early to make sure that you're able to get into the system, and then go wait wherever you want."
Listen to the full conversation with Tine on the WUNC Politics Podcast.
