Six House Democrats and State Sen. David ‘Rising’ Watters (also a Democrat) have proposed – wait for it – adding a new and utterly useless (and unnecessary) taxpayer-backed expense. HB 1552 would require anyone under 18 to obtain a learner’s permit before getting a driver’s license. Why?
Will a learner’s permit give you something that the current system (nothing) failed to provide? No. It is an added burden at no cost to the student, but that will cost taxpayers.
Permit holders would still need a licensed driver in the vehicle. They are still required to log 40 hours of practice time with a licensed driver. There are no testing changes and the “document” serves no purpose other than the bother and the addition of the cost to create learner’s permits.
The Department of Safety anticipates one-time system programming costs of $65,000 in FY 2021 and an annual cost of $33,750 ($2.25 per card x 15,000 cards) in FY 2021 and each year thereafter to produce learner’s permit car.
Why?
I suppose I could email one of the 7-learner’s-permit-bill dwarves and ask, but Democrats have a habit of not answering emails from Steve MacDonald at GraniteGrok. I can’t imagine why? I would happily include their quote without edits and full attribution.
Does this create a loophole for non-resident minors who obtain a permit who is then, according to the statue, entitled to a driver’s license?
Maybe that’s a stretch, but I can’t come up with any reasonable excuse to waste 100,000 dollars and $33.75K (probably more) every year after that except that these are Democrats.
Does anyone have any ideas?
