Letters and Comments for August 17, 2009

Winkelman

Red tape at the DMV

To the Editor:

I recently received a card from the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles telling about the changes in renewal requirements. I had no trouble with showing my Social Security number, although we are not supposed to have this document on us. I just showed my Medicare card.

I had gotten a United States passport so I took that with me. It will need renewal a year from now and my picture was definitely outdated, but as it had my legal name, it was accepted for both my citizenship and full legal name and it had my birthdate on it.

The real stumbling block was showing my current residential address. Although my current driver’s license was issued to my address where I have been for more than six years, I had changed the address to my post office box because I felt like mail would be safer there than in a box among six or seven other boxes near my house.

DMV would not accept my license with the renewal sticker on the back. They would not accept my paperwork that had both addresses. The clerk finally suggested, after he found out that I lived in another town miles away, that I go to OTEC in downtown La Grande for proof of my address. I drove downtown and the people at OTEC were nice enough to issue me the needed paper. I returned to DMV where things progressed smoothly.

I am just a little old lady who needed her driver’s license renewed. I had nothing better to do but go through the procedure demanded by DMV. When I think of my frustration and multiply it by the thousands of other local citizens, I am horrified.

Elizabeth Winkelman

Union