News and Press Releases for June 2007

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6/13/2007

Governor Sanford Signs REAL ID Bill

New Law Prevents South Carolina from Being Stuck with Costly Federal Mandate

Columbia, S.C. - Gov. Mark Sanford today traveled to Greenville to sign S449, a bill that keeps South Carolina from participating in the costly federal mandate known as the REAL ID Act.

REAL ID is a federal initiative aimed at creating a national ID card. With the governor's signature of the bill, South Carolina joined a growing number of other states that are declining to participate. If South Carolina were to participate in the ID program, the unfunded federal mandate would cost state taxpayers $25 million in startup costs and an additional $11 million on an annual basis. It would also increase DMV workloads by a projected 132 percent, pushing wait times to over an hour as every South Carolinian would be forced to get re-licensed in person under the new federal guidelines.

"While the goal of REAL ID when it comes to addressing homeland security is certainly a laudable one, it's a fundamentally flawed model that would have some very serious consequences both in terms of costs to taxpayers and in terms of quality of life when you look at all the time that would be wasted at the DMV," Gov. Sanford said. "We've said from day one that if the federal government wants stricter ID standards, they should leave it to the states to come up with a way to implement them that works best for each individual state. That's a model that worked well for welfare reform, and it's a model that we believe could work well for ID reform as well. But until this top-down federal mandate is changed, South Carolina is going to continue to stand against joining this program, and I'd thank the General Assembly for joining me in sending that message to Washington."

Under REAL ID, states would have to restructure their computer databases and other systems to create an extensive new document-storage system and verify the validity of every document presented to DMVs. The system has the potential to create bureaucratic morass, as was demonstrated in Alabama when they tested how they would comply with the REAL system last year. Their DMV sent out over 60,000 test letters to residents who needed to verify their documents. License holders, some who had been driving for 50 plus years, found themselves going to the DMV multiple times, waiting for hours, and afraid that their licenses were about to be taken away. Many of them had no way to verify the documents necessary to obtain a REAL ID. Legislators there ultimately shut down the system.