Kansas City has two DMV offices serving more than 500,000 residents.
Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw thinks that’s a problem.
“If there’s someone who has a regular 8-to-5 job, they have to take off work to go and get their license renewed,” she said. “It’s, many times, long waits, long lines.”
License offices are typically privately owned and contracted by the Missouri Department of Revenue. Before 2009, the best way to get a contract in Missouri was to be on friendly terms with the governor.
That meant that DMV offices weren’t always opened where they were needed. But in 2009, then-Gov. Jay Nixon scrapped the patronage system for a competitive bid process.
Now the Kansas City Council is trying to open and run its own publicly owned DMV office. The council approved a resolution on Oct. 10 directing City Manager Brian Platt to look at the process, estimate any costs and recommend a possible location.
How would a city-run Kansas City DMV work?
Parks-Shaw said she’d like to follow in the footsteps of Grandview, which has had a city-owned DMV since 1984 when a privately owned office was going out of business.
That would have left the city’s residents without any other nearby options. So the Grandview mayor pulled some strings in Jefferson City to save it.
“From what I understand, (then-Gov. Kit Bond) was very good friends with the Grandview mayor,” said Valarie Poindexter, the city’s communications manager. “So when they lost that office, she was like, ‘Hey, the city can take this over.’”
So Bond gave Grandview 12 weeks to make it happen, and it opened in a small office in City Hall.
Poindexter said the DMV has been an important asset for Grandview for 40 years. It processes about 1,750 driver’s licenses and car registrations per week, and residents can make property tax payments in the same office, rather than driving to Independence or the downtown courthouse.
The office is staffed by city employees, and any profit goes toward the city’s budget.
Financial problems for license offices
Poindexter said Grandview’s DMV makes enough money to cover the city’s water bill, but not much more.
Meanwhile, other DMVs in the state have struggled to keep their doors open. In 2023, the Missouri Department of Revenue could not find a single contractor willing to operate an office in downtown St. Louis — in part because it’s becoming less and less financially viable.
License and vehicle fees are set by the Missouri General Assembly, and the Statehouse has only approved one fee increase since 1999. That makes it difficult for DMV office operators to keep up with increasing costs.
That’s one factor in the decision to potentially open a city-run DMV in Kansas City.
“If it worked out that Kansas City actually has one of our departments that we staff to run it, we’re going to be able to provide that sustainability,” Parks-Shaw said, “more so than maybe an outside or community business.”
Poindexter said Grandview takes great pride in its DMV office. The city recently opened a standalone building for its DMV across the street from City Hall in February.
What happens next?
Parks-Shaw isn’t certain where a new DMV could go — it could be in midtown, in the Northland or in her district in the central city. She hopes it could be on a bus line so it’s easily accessible.
The two DMV locations in Kansas City are at Troost Avenue and Emanuel Cleaver II Boulevard and near Interstate 29 and Northwest 64th Street.
But just because the Kansas City Council wants a city-owned DMV like the one in Grandview does not necessarily mean that it’s going to get one.
The system of the 1980s, when the Grandview mayor could simply ask the governor for a license to run a DMV office, was replaced with a competitive bid process by the Missouri legislature in 2009.
Kansas City can ask for a new DMV, but that decision will ultimately depend on a feasibility study performed by the Department of Revenue. A study would consider factors like population, how many other license offices are nearby and what kind of businesses are in the area.
And if the Department of Revenue ultimately decides to open another location in Kansas City, it’s not necessarily going to be city-run.
Kansas City would submit a bid to run the office, but so could other businesses in the area.
Parks-Shaw said that regardless of the outcome, she sees the issue of DMVs as not only a matter of convenience, but also economics and democracy.
With the 2024 election rapidly approaching, she said Missouri’s voter ID law makes it all the more important to make sure Kansas Citians are able to keep a current driver’s license to vote. And keeping registration up to date can help drivers stay out of the courts and get to work.
For “those individuals who have expired car tags, fees continue to mount up,” she said. “They lose their access to their vehicles, which creates a negative impact on them and their livelihood, and their family’s livelihood, and ultimately hurting Kansas City overall.”
How to get in and out of the DMV quickly
- Renew your car’s registration online to save a trip.
- Avoid Mondays and Fridays and the last day of the month. Poindexter said those are the busiest days at the license office and can have wait times of hours.
- Use technology to get in line before you arrive. Some DMVs, including Grandview, use an app called QLess that allows you to check in from your phone. The app will send you a notification when you’re up next.
- If you don’t have the QLess app, you can also call ahead of time at some locations to be added to the queue.
- Talk to the clerk when you check in to make sure you have all the documents you need. That way, you’ll know if you’re missing a document before you reach the front of the line.
This story was originally published by The Beacon, a fellow member of the KC Media Collective.
