Looking forward to only renewing your driver’s license every 16 years? Bad news...
The General Assembly has rescinded two changes to state law that aimed to reduce crowding at Division of Motor Vehicles offices, after they were found to conflict with federal law.
A provision in the budget bill passed last fall would have doubled the renewal period for driver’s licenses in North Carolina to 16 years for drivers age 18 to 65. In addition, the bill allowed drivers to renew their licenses online every time, rather than having to visit a DMV office every other renewal as they must do now.
Both provisions were scheduled to go into effect July 1.
Instead, both were repealed with a single sentence in the 60-page “technical corrections” bill passed by legislators earlier this month. Gov. Roy Cooper signed the bill into law Wednesday.
The reversal results from miscommunication between the DMV and lawmakers. The idea of doubling the license renewal period from eight years to 16 was something the DMV requested in February 2023, and it appeared in the House version of the budget that spring.
But DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin said the department later learned that the change would violate federal law, specifically the REAL ID Act, which governs state driver’s licenses and IDs that meet federal security requirements. The act says REAL IDs issued by states are not valid for more than eight years, which allows DMVs to regularly update license designs to make them harder to counterfeit.
The REAL ID Act also requires that the photo on REAL IDs be replaced at least every 16 years. That requires an office visit, contradicting the budget bill provision that says they could be renewed online.
Goodwin says the agency requested the provisions be removed from the House version of the budget.
But that message didn’t reach everyone, and the changes appeared in the final version of the budget negotiated behind closed doors and released in September. Goodwin noted that the provisions would violate federal law but wasn’t able to get lawmakers to change the 625-page budget bill before it was approved a few days later.
In a statement this week, Goodwin said he was pleased the problem had been fixed.
“I’m grateful to the members of the General Assembly for correcting this matter and look forward to working with them as we continue our efforts to modernize DMV and improve the customer experience,” he said.
