City Councilman Stanley Chang wants an audit of the Division of Motor Vehicle, Licensing and Permits in the wake of continuing long lines at the agency’s offices.
Chang called the situation "shameful," noting that it is one of the agencies that deals most with city residents.
"This is the face that we’re presenting to the 900,000 people on Oahu," he said Thursday.
Lines at the offices, which have been known to get long sporadically, grew exponentially at the beginning of the year when the city took over responsibility from the state for issuing state identification cards.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell, in response, hired part-time employees to help and set up a hotline for people to call with questions about the complicated ID card verification process.
In the past month, waiting times have shrunk to about one to two hours from the earlier average of three to four hours, said Caldwell’s spokesman, Jesse Broder Van Dyke.
Chang’s resolution, expected to be heard Feb. 26 by the Council Parks Committee, calls on city Auditor Edwin Young to look into the reasons for the long lines and for possible ways to shorten them.
Resolution 13-27 notes that the city’s 2013 operating budget includes about $223,000 for nine new positions to help cover the cost of issuing state IDs. It also notes that the state is supposed to reimburse the city for the extra responsibility.
The Caldwell administration has maintained that the main reason for the lines has been, and continues to be, confusion about the complex series of documents needed to qualify for both state IDs and driver’s licenses. Many people told the Star-Advertiser they stood in line for several hours only to be told they needed to return with additional documents such as a birth certificate or pay stub.
Drivers licensing sites became more crowded last summer when the city began cracking down on the necessary documents that are needed to comply with the federal Legal Presence Act that was implemented as a national security measure after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks.
Caldwell, on Jan. 8, appeared at the City Square office in Kapalama and apologized to people standing in line. He told reporters that seven part-time employees were to be hired to help field questions about the necessary documents. The purpose of what city officials dubbed "triage" hires was to free more experienced staff to help with processing applications.
Broder Van Dyke said Thursday that three of the seven hires are working, two are in training and two are being processed by the Department of Human Resources.
About the same number of applicants for state IDs are coming in, but the wait times are declining largely due to the new part-time workers, Broder Van Dyke said.
Caldwell in January also announced that a hotline had been set up for people with questions about qualifying for a driver’s license or state ID. Broder Van Dyke said the hotline was discontinued after the number of calls fell rapidly toward the middle of January; there were no calls logged over the Martin Luther King holiday.
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ONLINE INFORMATION
To find out the documents needed to qualify for a driver’s license or state identification card, go to the city Department of Customer Services website at www1.honolulu.gov/csd.
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Broder Van Dyke said the city will display live video from cameras installed at five agency offices on the Department of Customer Services Web site so people can see from their computers how long lines are before deciding which office to go to, if at all. The cameras, which are scheduled to be rolled out in early March, will not be installed at Fort Street Mall, Pearlridge and Hawaii Kai satellite city halls, where driver’s licenses — but not state IDs — can be obtained.
Chang, who said he continues to receive a steady stream of complaints from constituents, said the city needs to do more.
"More personnel, more space — those are definitely on the table," Chang said. "I think definitely at the very least the city needs to look into line and wait-management techniques whether that’s a buzzer, or a timed reservation system, or a system where they can send you a message to let you know your turn is up."
An audit, he said, "is the best way we can be confident that we’re going to explore every avenue to reduce and manage the wait times."
CORRECTION: The city is starting a online video camera feed of the lines at five Division of Motor Vehicles offices on the city Department of Customer Services Web site beginning in early March. An earlier version of this story and the story on page A-19 of today’s paper said the cameras would be rolled out on Feb. 20.
