Spitzer drops drivers license plan

Plan attacked on two fronts

By FRITZ MAYER

NEW YORK STATE — With polls showing that Governor Eliot Spitzer could not get re-elected if voters went to the polls now, Spitzer announced on November 15 that he is dropping his plan to allow undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses.

First, the governor angered the state’s county clerks with his plan. Then, he upset civil libertarians.

The plan played a role in Sullivan County politics, and was considered by many to be a factor in the defeat of county clerk Neil Gilberg. While both candidates ultimately opposed the plan, Gilberg’s opponent, Dan Briggs, painted Gilberg as supporting the plan in campaign literature, and Briggs was victorious.

Spitzer’s plan would have provided three different licenses. First would be one issued to drivers near the Canadian border that would ease the process of crossing it. Second would be a license available to illegal immigrants, but one that could not be used as identification to board airplanes or cross borders. Third would be cards that could be obtained from legal residents that would be federally recognized identification cards, which could be used for such purposes as boarding planes and entering federal facilities.

The offer of the third type of license could have made New York the first state in the country to implement a federal program known as Real ID. The proposal came after Spitzer had discussions with the secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff.

The Real ID program has been sharply criticized by some members of Congress and civil libertarians because of privacy concerns and the enormous cost of launching a national identification program. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, under the program, citizen information would be stored in national databases and be available to all levels of law enforcement.

The Real ID law, which Congress passed two years ago, is set to take effect by 2013, but because of stiff resistance, it will not be mandatory; 17 states have passed laws preventing them from joining the program.

But most of the opposition to the plan came not from civil libertarians, but from a wide spectrum of residents. Spitzer’s plan was opposed by 70 percent of the population of New York State because of the perception that it would make the state less safe by allowing illegal immigrants easy access to a state-backed form of identification. On November 1, Assembly Minority Leader James Tedisco filed a lawsuit against Spitzer accusing him of exceeding his authority by changing the law that requires New York residents to provide a social security number in order to get a license.

The insurance issue

Spitzer’s initial reason for moving to allow illegal immigrants to obtain drivers licenses was to bring down the number of uninsured drivers in the state and thereby bring down the cost of insurance. Two states that have made it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain licenses have, in fact, achieved a reduction in uninsured drivers.

In 2003, New Mexico dropped the social security number requirement for obtaining a license and the rate of uninsured motorists dropped from 33 percent to 11 percent.

In 1999, Utah made the change and the rate of uninsured motorists dropped from 28 percent to under six percent.

It is not clear what effect such a change would have had in New York, because the rate of uninsured drivers is already one of the lowest in the nation, about seven percent.