DMV Service
Since he took office in May, Division of Motor Vehicles commissioner Paul Tine has said he wants his agency to be known for its good customer service, rather than as a source of dread and frustration. On Tuesday, he released a plan for how to get there.
The 35-page strategic plan outlines dozens of steps the DMV expects to take by the end of 2030 to better serve customers and reduce the long lines and wait times that have become common at its driver’s license offices. They range from straightforward moves such as opening new offices and expanding office hours to the more technical and long-term, such as offering digital licenses and ID cards and establishing an “NCDMV Innovation Lab” to develop and test “new customer service improvements.”
Tine says the plan will not only guide what DMV does over the next five years, but also show the public and others outside the agency what to expect.
“We want them to understand where we’re headed and that there’s a lot of great stuff coming that will benefit our customers,” he said. “And we want to hold ourselves accountable by being very transparent.”
The DMV will focus on seven priorities:
- Build a streamlined digital experience. Key goal: Increase the portion of DMV transactions performed online to 50%, up from 31% today.
- Improve physical offices, staffing and service mix. Key goal: Reduce average wait times at driver’s license offices to 15 minutes, down from 110 minutes now.
- Simplify the policies and rules that guide the department’s work. Key goal: All state laws and codes that apply to the DMV will be reviewed and recommendations made for improvements.
- Streamline processes and automate transactions. Key goal: 75% of callers to the DMV’s call center will have their issue resolved on the first call.
- Modernize and secure technology systems. Key goal: Replace five cumbersome, 30-year-old computer systems with one that brings all of a person’s driver’s license, vehicle and insurance records in one place
- Empower our entire team to be more customer-focused. Key goal: Achieve a customer satisfaction score of 85%.
- Create a great place to work: Key goal: Achieve an employee satisfaction score of 75% and reduce turnover by achieving a 95% voluntary retention rate.
That last goal will directly benefit customers, Tine says, by ensuring the person behind the counter or on the phone feels supported and not overworked. “The only way to be a great customer service organization is to have employees who are happy to be there and want to be there,” he said.
In addition to customer and employee surveys, the DMV will soon introduce a public dashboard with data showing the agency’s performance in key areas such as wait times and how long each transaction takes at the counter. The new strategic plan follows an earlier five-year plan the DMV adopted in 2019.
I-77 Lanes
The North Carolina Department of Transportation is planning to widen I-77 from uptown to the South Carolina line. This is the proposed new interchange of I-77 and the Belk Freeway.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation plans to spend $3.2 billion expanding Interstate 77 from uptown to the South Carolina line with two express toll lanes in each direction. But new renderings of the highway through uptown have alarmed residents, who worry the wider highway will decimate their neighborhoods. At a recent meeting of the Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization, some residents asked for help, like Al Austin, a former City Council member who is the president of the Third Ward Neighborhood Association. He said the new plan echoes decades past, when mainly Black communities were split to make way for highways.
“Now after decades and decades, instead of repairing and reconnecting these communities after past harm, we’re asked to accept even more construction, more destruction, more concrete,” Austin said. The widening project will require a complete rebuild of the highway. Most bridges over I-77 will need to be torn down and rebuilt. Some interchanges will also be redesigned, such as the interchange with the Belk Freeway south of uptown.
In an interview with WFAE earlier in the week, DOT engineer Brett Canipe said he wants to work with residents. “We simply don’t want to impact people,” he said. “I mean that’s just part of our job, to minimize impacts.” The DOT plans to hire a private developer to build and manage the toll lanes. That’s what the state did for express toll lanes on I-77 in north Mecklenburg, where the Spanish firm Cintra has a 50-year contract to operate them.
Bridge Funding
The North Carolina Department of Transportation returned to the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization this week to present a comparative analysis of tolling options for the planned replacement of the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. While both have upsides and downfalls, it will ultimately be up to the WMPO to decide between a public-private partnership or facility run by the state if it chooses to implement a toll at all. The NCDOT is required to present a comparative analysis when a structure could potentially become tolled, though officials on Wednesday were clear the WMPO is still considering all alternative means of funding. “I do not want to toll this bridge and we have got to do everything that we can to find other methods, to find money to pay for it,” New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise said. “I don’t know what will ultimately happen, but I’m not giving up.” With repairing the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge becoming financially impractical, NCDOT and the WMPO have been searching for a way to fund its replacement for years. The NCDOT has dedicated $85 million to the project and secured a $242 million federal grant, though this will only put a small dent in the estimated $1.1 billion price tag for a 135-foot bridge replacement.
A key recommendation from the state auditor’s investigation of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency is the formation of a partnership between the Council of State, the General Assembly and the Department of Public Safety.
State leaders would work with legislators as part of a Sustainable Outcomes for Long-Term Impact and Disaster Recovery (SOLID) Partnership.
North Carolina continues to experience billion-dollar, catastrophic storms and worsening ‘1,000-year events.’ NCORR is the beleaguered state agency responsible for coordinating recovery efforts following hurricanes Florence and Matthew.
The phaseout of NCORR coincided with the startup of the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene last fall that caused more than $60 billion in damage. The knee-jerk response of starting a new agency in the aftermath of a disaster can lead to errors and a lack of oversight, state auditor Dave Boliek told the Joint Legislative Commission Governmental Operations subcommittee on hurricane response and recovery Thursday.
“We just set up an ad hoc program every time there’s a disaster,” Boliek said. “If we had another disaster, I don’t think anybody in this room really wants a third organization set up on an ad hoc basis.”
The auditor’s office planned to conduct a complete audit of the NCORR agency beginning in early spring of this year. That wasn’t possible due to the inability of NCORR to produce relevant and reliable data regarding financial statements and positions. In a “tactical” decision, according to Boliek, the audit focused only on the Homeowner’s Recovery Program, the flagship homebuilding initiative of the agency.
“The folks that I brought in and took a look at it said it was the worst government program they had ever seen,” Boliek said, adding it would take up to a $2 million allocation from the Legislature to provide a more-in depth investigative audit.
A unified oversight body would bring every relevant stakeholder to the table and form a more permanent structure for overseeing hurricane recovery, Boliek said.
Sen. Julie Mayfield, D-Buncombe, raised the issue of who would be responsible under this proposed entity. She said it potentially could be too easy for state leaders to “pass the buck” if the responsibility for hurricane relief is diffused across various state agencies and leaders.
“We cannot ignore the political world in which we live,” she said. “In having it housed anywhere other than the governor's office, regardless of party, the politics would come into play and make it difficult and challenging.”
Boliek agreed it would be difficult to avoid the political realities in any proposed deliberative body, but he believes that individuals who serve in state offices do so for the right reasons.
While having an already established program could work, Mayfield said, she thought the General Assembly’s quick influx of state dollars for Helene recovery, as opposed to the wait for federal dollars for Matthew and Florence, shows the state's different approach to storm response.
$709 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds was granted to NCORR’s Homeowner Recovery Program between July 2019 and August 2020. Close to $300 million came from the state, with the first appropriation from the General Assembly of $30 million taking place in October of 2024.
The General Assembly appropriated $273 million in recovery funding weeks after Hurricane Helene’s impact. It has now allocated roughly $2 billion.
“We know it takes time to stand up these programs,” Mayfield said. “The federal dollars are slow. When the next disaster happens again, it is incumbent upon us to put money into particularly the housing program as quickly as we can to get it stood up. We can’t wait on the federal dollars.”