Increasing hours and adding staff to branch offices for the Secretary of State are the goals of two bills in the state House. Both would be in effect until September 30 and result in the ability to add 500,000 appointments to clear the COVID-19 backlog. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says they will not be returning to the take-a-number and wait system and will stick to next-day appointments.
“The answer is not, as we have repeatedly told lawmakers, to reject a new model that is working and very popular and replace it with a failed system that was inefficient and broken,” says Benson,
Representative Stephanie Young says lawmakers last year allowed people to not need to renew licenses and registrations due to COVID-19 but…
“The problem is the Legislature then let all of these extensions expire at once on March 31. There was no phasing-in or funding to help meet the unprecedented demand,” says Young.
She and Representative Julie Brixie are hoping the House Oversight Committee holds a hearing on their bills soon. In the last two years, the Department of State increased the number of transactions that can be done without an office visit and replaced all self-service stations with nearly 150 new ones, many of which are in Kroger and Meijer grocery stores. These changes cut the share of transactions that are carried out in branch offices from 74% down to 40%.
