One of the accomplishments Gov. Sonny Perdue has claimed for his administration is that his creation of the Department of Driver Services helped reduce the waiting time for Georgians trying to get a driver’s license renewed or issued.
Unfortunately for the big guy from Houston County, even that legacy appears to be gone with the wind.
Walter C. Jones reports in the Florida Times-Union that waiting times for licenses have nearly doubled over the past year:
The time Georgia motorists spend waiting in line at the Georgia Department of Driver Services has doubled in 2009, erasing gains made in recent years.
The average wait in 2008 had dropped about 30 percent from the average of 8 minutes, 9 seconds during the final six months of 2007. The 5-minute, 26-second average in 2008 was achieved at a time when the department was beginning to cope with modest budget cuts that affected every agency of state government.
So far in the first 10 months of 2009, the average wait time across the state has ballooned to just 6 second shy of 11 minutes, according to figures from the department.
Perdue’s decision to abolish the Department of Motor Vehicle Safety (which was created during the administration of Roy Barnes) and “reorganize” it into a new agency never made a lot of sense in the first place.
The original department, by all accounts, was competently administered under its first commissioner, Tim Burgess, and did a very good job of serving customers. The recession that crippled state revenues during Perdue’s first years in office resulted in budget cutbacks that forced the Department of Motor Vehicle Safety to lay off employees and leave vacant positions unfilled. Not surprisingly, the reduction in employees resulted in longer waiting times for persons with driver’s licenses.
Rather than simply restore funding to the department so that it could beef up its staff and reduce the waiting periods, Perdue instead insisted upon a widely publicized “reorganization” that he said would enable the department to “focus like a laser” on customer service.
The dismantling of a state agency that was already being administered efficiently raised questions among lawmakers who didn’t see the need for such a drastic step. Rep. Alan Powell (D-Hartwell) opposed Perdue’s reorganization bill with a stirring floor speech, but fell one vote short of defeating the measure.
The reorganized Department of Driver Services, like its predecessor, has once again seen the waiting periods for driver’s licenses creep up. The reason is the same — budget cutbacks.
Jones noted in his article: “A steep decline in tax collections has forced spending reductions in every state department of about 8 percent since July. In response, the department has closed to the public during days when workers have been on furloughs.”
It’s very simple, really. If you cut an agency’s budget so that it doesn’t have enough employees to handle the flow of incoming customers, it is not going to move them through the process very quickly. It’s going to take a longer period of time for fewer employees to meet the demands of more customers.
Of course, under Sonny Perdue’s logic, the state will have to dismantle the current Department of Driver Services, completely reorganize it, and put the functions under a new agency that can “focus like a laser” and reduce those waiting periods.
Maybe they can call the new agency the Department of Motor Vehicle Safety.
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