Missourians still have to show documents, wait for licenses

But you’ll still have to bring the same documents with you to the fee office — such as a birth certificate and proof of residency — where workers will examine them before ordering your license.

Gov. Jay Nixon quietly signed legislation this week barring the state Department of Revenue from making electronic copies of personal documents used to obtain licenses.

After spending much of the 2013 legislative session drawing attention to the document scanning, Republican lawmakers hailed Nixon’s decision to approve their legislation barring the department from making electronic copies. House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, said the new law demonstrates “that the Legislature’s hard work to protect Missourians’ privacy is having a significant impact.”

The Department of Revenue started scanning personal documents in December as part of a new system that agency officials have defended as an attempt to make Missouri licenses more secure. The shift coincided with the state’s move to a centralized vendor now printing Missouri licenses in Georgia — a cheaper alternative, officials say, than having printers in every license office.

Drivers licenses will continue to be printed out of state, according to Department of Revenue spokeswoman Michelle Gleba.

John Mollenkamp, acting director of the Department of Revenue , indicated at a recent hearing that officials were prepared if Nixon, a Democrat, decided to sign the anti-scanning legislation.

“We can continue issuing drivers licenses without scanning documents,” he said.

Gleba said license applicants are still required to bring in identification documents, such as birth certificates or passports. Applicants also are required to provide Social Security numbers and show proof of residency.

At the license office, applicants will receive temporary paper licenses. Their permanent licenses will arrive in the mail about two weeks later. According to Gleba, the state’s contract with its Georgia-based printer, which provided equipment to licensing offices, still stands because the new state law allows the scanning of documents needed for certain commercial licenses.

Matthew Carroll, manager of the license office in Clayton, said he doesn’t have any problems with the change.

“I was told what the directive was, and that’s what I’ll follow,” he said.

Meanwhile, the issue is still generating political interest at the Missouri Capitol, where lawmakers say they will continue to have hearings on the agency’s now-defunct policy of scanning the documents.

In April, Nixon’s revenue director, Brian Long, resigned after being grilled over the scanning policy. The following day, Nixon announced that the department would no longer scan concealed gun permits when those endorsements were added to licenses.

Under the old policy, electronic copies of the documents — often government documents that the state already has — were kept in a state database in Jefferson City.

Revenue officials repeatedly defended the process as an attempt to cut down on fraudulent licenses, though they admitted that past instances of fraud likely would not have been caught simply through scanning.

Several lawmakers have sought to tie the document scanning to the 2005 federal Real ID Act, an anti-terrorism initiative that came about following recommendations from the 9/11 commission.

The Missouri Legislature passed, and Nixon signed, a law in 2009 that requires the state to opt out of those stricter ID guidelines.

Jones, the House speaker, recently created the Investigative Committee on Privacy Protection in response to the controversy, and that group has been holding hours-long hearings at the Capitol, with testimony from Department of Revenue officials.

“We must find out who was responsible for the decisions which put this information at risk, and we must hold them accountable,” Jones said in a statement.

“Only by finding the full extent of the problem can we come up with a permanent solution to prevent future privacy violations.”

Beyond the legislation barring the scanning, the Department of Revenue faced significant budget cuts if it didn’t stop making the electronic copies of personal documents. Lawmakers cut the department’s licensing arm budget by two-thirds for the fiscal year that started this week, vowing to restore funding only if officials changed their policies by the time the Legislature returns to the Capitol in January.

Nixon, in vetoing a different bill this week that would have created a database of every Missourian who has ever filed a workers’ compensation claim, vaguely referred to the Department of Revenue controversy.

“There is a stark contrast between lawmakers’ rhetoric on the issue of privacy, and their record,” he said in a statement. “While professing to champion privacy rights, this General Assembly quietly passed a bill to create — and allow broad access to — a new electronic database containing the personal information of hundreds of thousands of law-abiding Missourians.”