Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
The Kentucky Senate gave near unanimous approval to allowing officials such as sheriffs and county clerks to renew driver’s licenses in counties without regional offices, sending Senate Bill 7 to the House for consideration.
Sen. Aaron Reed, R-Shelbyville, the bill’s sponsor, on Friday told his fellow senators that “the burden has fallen too heavily on the people.”
“Our constituents have told us clearly that the current system for driver’s license services is not working,” he said. “Long drives, long lines, missed work, missed school—for a basic government service.”
The only senator to vote against the bill was Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, who called for doing more.
“It is not addressing the issues and I feel we should have,” she said. “We should be passing a stronger piece of legislation to start the work on.”
Tichenor referred to a bill she proposed in 2025 that would have established at least one permanent, full-time, driver’s license regional office within each county with a population of 50,000 or more.
In 2020 a law shifted driver’s licensing from circuit court clerks to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet, which led to the regional office system. The move helped Kentucky comply with federal requirements to offer Real ID driver’s licenses.
Kentucky established 34 regional offices that issue and renew driver’s licenses. Drivers would still have to go to a regional office for a new license under this legislation. It would allow counties without a regional office to choose one local official to offer license renewal services, who would charge a $25 additional fee to offset expenses.
Counties with regional offices are “taken care of for now” and would keep all services at those offices, Reed said.
During his weekly press conference on Thursday, Gov. Andy Beshear pointed to several factors that drove up wait times — which the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet says are now down to 11 minutes — including a 2025 law that let 15-year-olds get driving permits, federal enforcement of the REAL ID deadline and required vision screenings.
“We think we’ve now gotten through that press of folks, that additional volume. Wait times are way down. Satisfaction is going up,” Beshear said.
His administration “may even have a counter proposal,” Beshear said, adding he would support having newly required vision screenings done at a more local level.
“My concern about changing the system is everybody else is going to have to start from scratch now and go through possibly those six years of the learning curve,” Beshear said. “I want to make sure that we don’t just scrap a system that we’ve worked six years to build and then start a new system from scratch, because I think we’ll have the same problems and concerns.”
During a gaggle with reporters Thursday, Senate President Robert Stivers said the bill is just a “starting point” and could change as it moves through the legislative process.
He said, as Reed has, that there is a need to address long drives to regional offices, long waits and insufficient staff. “The Transportation Cabinet, who is in charge of this under Gov. Beshear, has not been real responsive to a lot of the complaints that we have been hearing and receiving,” Stivers said. “So, we’re going to take our shot at it.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
