Gov. Blunt alters rules for license bureaus

Gov. Matt Blunt cracked down on Missouri drivers' license offices Friday, announcing they must now be open more hours and will be penalized for errors.

Under the new requirements, licensing offices must open for a half-day on the last Saturday of the month and -- in some cases -- may be required to provide extended hours. Licensing offices with more than a 2 percent error rate will now be charged a $22 penalty per mistake. Fee agents who run the offices also must have a business plan approved by the Missouri Department of Revenue to continue operating.

Blunt said the changes are intended to make licensing offices not only more accountable and customer-friendly, but also less of a moneymaking machine for the governor-appointed fee agents.

Errors made by licensing offices have become a major problem, the governor said, pointing to a 17.6 percent error rate for one of Oregon County's offices. The average error rate for all of the state's 171 offices is 4 percent. Blunt said the new penalty fee will help cover the costs incurred by state government when the offices make a mistake.

The license bureau offices in Cape Girardeau, Jackson and Chaffee are already open on the last Saturday of the month.

Anita Atchison, the manager of the Chaffee license bureau, would not comment at length, but did say "the governor needs to be informed on some of the problems we have."

A receptionist at the Cape Girardeau license bureau office on Friday said office manager Norma Wildman, who also oversees the Jackson office, was busy and unavailable to comment.

The governor also criticized the department of revenue for spending more than $17 million on a new computer system that is still not up and running a decade later, a problem unveiled publicly Thursday by State Auditor Claire McCaskill.

The program -- called FASTR -- would allow licensing offices to submit vehicle licensing and titling information electronically to the department of revenue's headquarters in Jefferson City instead of mailing in the paperwork. About $1.8 million in computer equipment purchased about four years ago for the program has been stashed in a storage warehouse unused.

Blunt said new department of revenue director Trish Vincent found the computers in early December.

"No state departments should have these sorts of expenditures and abuses and misuses of tax dollars and be allowed to continue operating in the same way," Blunt said. "Every Missouri taxpayer ought to be mad about those numbers."

He added that a state audit in 2002 -- conducted by his former Democratic gubernatorial opponent McCaskill -- failed to identify the problems with the FASTR system.

Thursday, McCaskill announced that she had found the computers and said it was "clearly a waste of public funds."

Vincent said the department plans to get FASTR -- which she plans to rename -- set up by the end of year and will use the stored computers.

She said it's "very premature" to consider eventually closing license offices once everything becomes electronic, noting that only a small percentage of residents choose to renew their licenses online.

But she added, "We're going to be looking at how we can make things more efficient and how we can provide services to the citizens of Missouri."

Currently, the Southeast Missouri State University Foundation operates the license bureaus in Jackson and Cape Girardeau. However, the Jackson Chamber of Commerce has asked the governor to restore the authority to the chamber. The chamber, which operated the license bureau in Jackson before the late governor Mel Carnahan took office in 1993, has not yet received word on Blunt's decision. The Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce has not stated whether it has requested reinstatement or not.

Staff writer Bob Miller contributed to this report.