North Carolina DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin (Photo: NCGA video stream)
DMV commissioner Wayne Goodwin announces plans to leave beleaguered agency
North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Wayne Goodwin came to the legislature Wednesday prepared to deliver an update and some personal news. Goodwin, who was appointed in 2022 by then-Gov. Roy Cooper to lead the beleaguered agency, told members of the Joint Transportation Appropriations committee that he will be leaving the helm once his successor has been selected.
“While my professional plans this morning may come as a surprise to some folks, I’ve been truly mulling this decision in earnest for quite some time,” Goodwin shared. “Now is the time for me to focus on new chapters and new beginnings in my life.”
Goodwin said a new fiancée and merging two families into one will soon be his primary focus, but he plans to help Gov. Josh Stein and NC DOT Secretary Joey Hopkins in finding a suitable replacement.
The NCDMV has been a frequent target for Republican lawmakers amid a steady stream of constituent complaints over appointment access and license renewals. In February, state Auditor Dave Boliek said his agency was conducting a ‘floor-to-ceiling’ review of the DMV.
But Goodwin wanted to use his time before lawmakers Wednesday to shine a light on recent accomplishments.
Goodwin told legislators that his agency, which had a vacancy rate exceeding 25% when he came on board, has hired more than 400 examiners over three years to reduce the wait time for services.
DMV credentials are now manufactured and mailed within 10 days. Customers waiting for a license or other documentation should receive those in the mail within three weeks, he pledged.
License plates and registrations are mailed the day after processing.
The DMV has also addressed the problem of people making appointments and then never showing up. In 2024, more than one-third of North Carolinians who reserved an appointment at their DMV office never came in, effectively leaving those state employees on hold. Goodwin told lawmakers that they’ve dramatically improved efficiency with a steady stream of text and email confirmations and reminders. This month, the no-show rate for appointments was just 8.5%.
Twenty offices now offer Saturday hours during summer “peak” season.
Nine self-serve kiosks have processed more than 21,000 transactions in the first year of the pilot project.
The on-going modernization of the DMV’s technology offers the opportunity for greater improvements, but also the need for additional expertise.
Rep. Frank Iler (R-Brunswick), one of the committee co-chairs, said he appreciated the modernization efforts, but several “hotspots” remain in the southeastern part of the state.
“Is [there] still any barrier to taking your temporary folks that doing a good job and making them permanent?” Iler asked.
Goodwin said the agency would welcome a chance to move some workers from temporary to permanent positions, if the legislature could help provide that flexibility.
As legislators begin crafting the state’s budget and the Department of Transportation moves forward with a new commissioner, Goodwin underscored that North Carolina’s continued growth would impact how seamlessly customers interact with the DMV.
In a state with 11 million residents, there are only 115 driver license offices, and the agency projects a surge in DMV departures from their ranks in the next few years. Goodwin could add his name to the retirement list in a matter of weeks.
— Clayton Henkel
State Senate advances its version of school cellphone ban
A North Carolina Senate committee on Wednesday advanced a bipartisan bill that would require public schools to establish policies restricting the use “wireless communication devices” during instructional time.
The committee approved Senate Bill 55, which would require local education agencies to implement policies that ban students from using, displaying, or having their phones turned on during class.
The bill defines a wireless communication device as “any portable wireless device that has the capability to provide voice, messaging, or other data communication between two or more parties,” including cellular telephones, tablet computers, laptop computers, paging devices, two-way radios, and gaming devices.
“This isn’t really a debate about the merits of technology,” Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake County). “At a minimum, we need to restrict the use of cell phones in our classrooms with very few exceptions, because technology without guard rails exact a maximum cost on our children’s mental health, especially young women.”
Some committee members raised concerns about a complete ban on phones, suggesting that an amendment allowing devices to be silenced, rather than completely turned off, might be a reasonable compromise, particularly in emergencies.
This bill is similar to House Bill 87, which passed a House committee Tuesday. While both bills aim to limit student cell phone use in the classroom, Senate Bill 55 would go further by requiring a more stringent ban on all wireless communication devices, including tablets and laptops, during instructional time.
The bill now moves to the Senate Rules Committee for further review before potentially advancing to the full Senate for a vote. If passed, it would require school districts to have new policies in place by the start of the 2025-2026 academic year.
The bill’s primary sponsors are GOP Senators Michael Lee (New Hanover), Jim Burgin (Harnett, Lee, Sampson) and Lisa Barnes (Franklin, Nash, Vance), but several members of both parties have also signed onto the bill as co-sponsors.
— Ahmed Jallow
NC lawmakers want to reimburse farmers who lost crops to natural disasters
A group of Republican state lawmakers are pushing for a new program to reimburse North Carolina farmers for lost crops, months after Hurricane Helene left the mountains’ agricultural sector reeling.
The $475 million proposal, filed last week and approved by a House committee Wednesday, would be available to farmers across the state. It would pay them back a portion (in many cases, around 20-25%) of the value of uninsured crops lost to storms in 2024.
Rep. Jimmy Dixon (R-Duplin), a chair of the House agriculture committee, said the bill sought to put all farmers hurt by storms on equal ground.
“It proposes equality, no division east or west,” Dixon told reporters, flanked by lawmakers hailing from both ends of the state. “The common denominator is that farmers grow crops.”
The plan earned bipartisan support during the committee hearing. Its program would last one year; any unused money would return to the state’s coffers.
“This is not an attempt to set the standard for any future opportunities,” Dixon clarified.
Lawmakers recently approved $75 million in a separate crop loss program, targeted specifically at western North Carolina. That program was included in the latest round of Helene aid. They created a similar program after Hurricane Fran hit eastern North Carolina in 1996.
Helene capped a brutal year for farmers in the state — with alternating droughts and floods leading to unpredictable plants and harvests, and storms ripping acres’ worth of topsoil as far as Tennessee.
Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler told lawmakers late last year that 2024 presented a “real mess” for the sector, which produced $111 billion for North Carolina last year.
— Galen Bacharier