Published: March 06, 2008 10:24 pm         

House lets Real ID die

CHARLESTON — Big Brother needn’t fear any challenge by West Virginia over the controversial Real ID act.

Given nearly a two-year extension for the state to come in line with the federal act, the House Roads and Transportation Committee decided to let the Senate bill succumb this week.

“Actually,” chairwoman Lidella Hrutkay, D-Logan, said, “it was dead before it even got over here.”

Sen. Clark Barnes, R-Randolph, aided by the American Civil Liberties Union, convinced the Senate to pass his bill that would have blocked West Virginia from participating in Real ID, an act promoted as part of the Bush administration’s homeland security effort.

Barnes, however, viewed it as another intrusion into an individual’s privacy since it would give the federal government access to one’s financial and medical records.

“We should act now and send a message to Washington that these are our concerns,” Barnes said Thursday.

Barnes said he understood the legislative leadership had agreed to stifle his bill in the House because Transportation Secretary Paul Mattox was given an extension for compliance to New Year’s Eve 2009.

“They didn’t seem to look at all the ramifications of the personal privacy invasion,” Barnes said.

“They’re looking at it strictly from a bureaucratic administrative standpoint or how to administer it. They don’t seem to have any interest or concern about violations of rights that are involved.”

Barnes, a conservative, formed a rare alliance with the ACLU in seeking to thwart the state’s participation.

ACLU organizer Seth DiStefano worried that personal records, after a single foul-up somewhere along the line of 56 vehicular licensing divisions that ultimately would be linked into one system, would be compromised.

Already, 17 other states have taken action similar to what Barnes had in mind, the ACLU official pointed out in testifying before Senate panels.

But Sen. Frank Deem, R-Wood, said opposition made no sense to him when “we’re already doing 90 percent of what’s required under that legislation.”

Since Congress acted, he pointed out, the initial projected startup cost of $42 million, as estimated by the Division of Motor Vehicles, has plunged to about $2 million to $5 million, with an annual maintenance cost of $2 million.

“We have plenty of time to see what other changes might be made between now and then,” he said.

Hrutkay agreed, saying, “We can make changes in the future, and now we have a future in which to make changes.”

What’s more, Deem quoted the Department of Homeland Security as saying that states that fail to come into compliance won’t be able to let residents board airplanes with routine drivers’ licenses as identification.

“They will have to use a birth certificate or passport or something of that nature before they can get access to airplanes,” Deem said.

“So it would be premature on our part, I think, to pass that legislation. Obviously, the House must feel the same way.”

Barnes said the leadership is looking at the issue with limited vision.

“Bureaucrats tend not to look at people’s rights because they extend their power by enforcing more regulations on the people,” he said.

The senator viewed his bill as a chance for the individual citizen to tell federal bureaucrats that “enough is enough.”

“Get your nose out of our business,” he said. “Big Brother has gone too far.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com