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On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom and his administration made a request for $168 million in order to hire more than 1,100 new employees at the California DMV. He says this will help reduce wait times at their offices across the state.
According to H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for Newsom's Finance Department, this request is from the team the governor assembled back in January to help 'fix the DMV.' Last summer, wait times were reportedly up to six hours.
And that doesn't even begin to cover the problems they've had with the California Real IDs...
Almost $135 million of that request would go to creating new positions in order to help process all of the Real ID applications. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the DMV has already had to hire 900 temporary workers to help with this. The rest of the money would go to allowing the offices to take credit cards, adding 200 more service kiosks, among other basic media campaigns.
Within this plan, Newsom also says he wants to add 178 permanent jobs at the DMV. But will any of this actually work?!
“At this point, I don’t have confidence in the department or the leadership team that they know how to spend the money properly,” San Francisco Assemblyman Phil Ting said.
Don't forget that in January, Newsom also asked the legislative budget committees for $40 million to cover the overtime for employees at the DMV. That has yet to be approved.