U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff boasted about the value of the federal Real ID driver’s license program with lawmakers from around the country at the National Conference of State Legislators meeting here, but Maryland lawmakers said he offered little of anything new about an unfunded federal requirement that burdens the states and creates a threat to privacy.
“We are not mandating a federal responsibility,” Chertoff told some of the 1,700 state legislators attending. States can opt out of the program that makes driver’s licenses more difficult to counterfeit and requires more identity checks to get them, but then drivers from those states will not be able to use them for federal purposes, such as getting on an airplane.
“I recognize that doesn’t seem like much of a choice,” Chertoff said, but “I think it’s a benefit to privacy,” since driving licenses are not secure. He bemoaned the failure to pass the proposed immigration legislation since it “would have had a big slug of money” to help the states pay for implementing the new driver’s licenses.
Oregon Sen. Bruce Starr challenged Chertoff in a question to “fix and fund Real ID,” but Montgomery County Sen. Jennie Forehand said afterward, “We don’t want it fixed. We want it repealed.”
She said the program would cost $14.5 billion nationally and the cost to process a Maryland’s driver’s license would go from $45 to $185.
But Forehand, co-chair of the Joint Committee on Federal Relations who has been a persistent critic of Real ID, said, “The main problem is the massive database. It’s going to be a feast for the identity thieves.”
Chertoff said, “Real ID doesn’t contemplate a big federal database,” but the program does require participating states to link their state databases of all drivers. “It’s not possible for that to be secure,” Forehand said.
Del. Samuel “Sandy” Rosenberg, a Baltimore City delegate who is vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which has had a hearing on Real ID, said, “You’ve got to assume that it’s not going to be as private as you’d like it to be.”
“It’s a real burden to the states,” Rosenberg said. “It’s an unfunded mandate,” one of the many that the organization of state legislators persistently complains about.
Asked if there was anything new in Chertoff’s presentation, Rosenberg said, “I didn’t hear it.”
