Published: April 01, 2008 11:25 am         

REAL ID compliance deadline passes March 31

Ada — March 31 marked the original final date for states to request a compliance extension for the largely unknown REAL ID Act of 2005. According to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, states that failed to file an extension by the end of March would be subject to rigorous security checks at commercial airports and federal buildings as of May 11, and residents of those states would no longer be allowed to use drivers licenses to board domestic flights. A complaince extension would push that deadline back to November 2009. The act has drawn criticism from more than two dozen states, and has led a handful of states, including Oklahoma, to pass legislation that forbids state compliance with the current REAL ID Act. While Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry did request an extension for Oklahoma, he made it clear the request for an extension did not mean a promise of compliance.

The compliance from Oklahoma was authorized to ensure that no sanctions would be made against Oklahomans, said Paul Sund, Henry’s communications director. “We still have concerns about the act, and we have not promised to comply.

But we thought it was going to be best for Oklahoma, particularly those people that travel a lot, businesses and so forth, to get an extension.” Sund said Henry’s office still plans to protest the Act, and that the extension was made in order to ensure that Oklahomans would not fall victim to any restrictions in May.

Oklahoma, Maine, New Hampshire, Montana, and South Carolina all said they would not comply with the REAL ID Act, and many other states voiced concerns with different aspects of the program. One of Henry’s chief concerns with the Act was how it would be paid for. “The bottom line was the Federal Government was not providing sufficient funding,” said Sund. “It was essentially going to be an unfunded mandate that we really couldn’t afford.”

Sund said while funding was a chief concern, there are other worrying aspects as well. “We just don’t know if this whole nation-wide ID system is going to work,” he said.

In state legislature, Legislators passed Senate Bill 464, which “the Governor of Oklahoma to delay compliance with the REAL ID Act of 2005 until certain regulations are promulgated and reviewed.” Article 2 of the first section of the bill addressed security concerns that the Act would introduce: “The REAL ID Act of 2005 does not expressly provide for information privacy or data security, yet creates national standards for driver licenses and identification documents that may increase such documents’ vulnerability to counterfeiting, and creates nationally synchronized databases that may allow criminals to access the information of drivers in any state from tens of thousands of locations ...”

While Oklahoma was granted an extension without promising to comply, New Hampshire was denied extension when it attempted to follow suit. New Hampshire asked for a compliance extension, but it was not granted because the state said that it would not comply to the mandates. “An extension request is not an extension simply for more time, it’s an extension to move toward compliance,” said Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. “So it needs to be a good-faith request for extension.”

But what exactly makes for a “good-faith request” is still unclear. According to Sund, “when our local Department of Homeland Security people communicated with the Washington, D.C. folks, we made it clear that we weren’t promising to comply. And they said to us that they didn’t take our extension request as a promise to comply.”

As the deadline loomed, Homeland Security finally compromised with the noncompliant states, granting extensions to Montana and New Hampshire not for making extension compliance requests, but for writing letters in praise of their respective states’ current ID programs. Maine has since followed suit, and South Carolina waited until the final day of the deadline to put in a final request to the Federal Government not to reject the state’s licenses in May, including in the letter lengthy anti-REAL ID arguments as well. Homeland Security had not reached a final decision regarding the two states as of the time of publication.

     

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