Kansas doesn’t expect major increase

While several states are protesting the costs of adopting national driver’s license requirements, Kansas isn’t among them.

“We don’t think it’s going to affect the cost of getting a driver’s license in Kansas,” said Carmen Alldritt, director of Division of Vehicles within the Kansas Department of Revenue.

“But the process may end up taking longer than what people are used to,” she said. The new law takes effect in 2008.

Today, most Kansas driver’s licenses cost between $16 and $22 and are good for four and six years, respectively.

Kansas’ driver’s license standards, Alldritt said, already meet or exceed all but two of the new requirements:

¢ “We don’t keep copies of documentation presented by first-time presenters – we just look at it and hand it back to you,” she said. “So we’ll need to scan it in before we give it back.”

¢ The Division of Vehicles is not set up to verify birth certificates and other documents from other states.

“That’s going to take an inter-connectivity with other states’ bureaus of vital statistics that, right now, none of us have,” Alldritt said.

State workers, she said, are likely to need one or two days to scan first-time presenters’ documents and to receive confirmation from other states.

Currently, the cost of inter-connecting vital-statistic computer systems in all 50 states is unclear.

“I suspect we’ll know more after we get into the ‘rules-and-regs’ phase of this,” she said. “Right now, there’s not a real clear picture of how it’s going to work and what the requirements will be.”

Kansas, she said, already takes digital photos, confirms Social Security numbers and, a year ago, adopted “facial recognition” technology that scans identifying patterns in the irises of applicants eyes.

“And we don’t have 20-year renewals like some other states,” Alldritt said.