When in Rome Wednesday: Guilty until proven innocent

For the first time since I was 16, I'm filled with feelings of relief and and newfound freedom as a result of obtaining an Indiana Driver's License.

Of course, I'm 29 now, but I would have preferred re-taking Driver's Education with its Saturday mornings full of parallel parking drills to the bizarre and frustrating bureaucratic nightmare of the last four months.

It began in early May, when I sought to finalize our recent move from Illinois by obtaining my Indiana license.  It was easy enough at first.  I passed the written test easily.  (Though if my car is ever submerged with me in it, that's ballgame; I missed that one.)  The one final step was the standard background check through the Problem Driver Pointer System (PDPS; yes, I've now become very familiar with this term).

"Mr. Fuller?"  called Kim of the Linton Branch of the Indiana BMV.  "We have a problem."

"Oh?"

"You've been flagged in two states," she explained, asking if I had ever resided in New York or Pennsylvania.

"I've never lived there, or even visited there for more than 24 hours," I said, still naively confident this would be resolved after a second check run.

"Well, it's telling me I can't issue you a license."

Hmm.  Upon further questioning, I learned that someone (or some people) named Andrew R. Fuller with my birth date had raised a ruckus in the Empire and Keystone States, respectively.

"Can't you just run the last for digits of our Social Security Numbers?" I said, still with the naive confidence that common sense would rule the day.

"No, it won't let me do that."

Now I was annoyed.  What came next from Kerri, the Branch Manager, didn't help: She explained that I would have to contact the BMV's of both New York and Pennsylvania to ask what I needed to do to prove I was not the person they were after.  To reiterate, the burden of proof was on me.

"And what happens if someone comes in here who is named 'John Smith,' and they come up in 38 states?" I asked semi-rhetorically, hoping to point out the absurdity of the situation.

"Well, they would have to go to each state and prove they aren't the person they're looking for."

Having rammed my head into a brick wall enough that day, I set out to be processed in the BMVs of two of the most populous states in the Union.  It couldn't have been some place like Montana, where likely a notorized letter stating I had never killed an animal with a firearm would be enough to prove my non-residence (and preclude any future residence).  No, it had to be New York, where probably 12 Andy Fullers had whacked someone by lunch.  Nevertheless, I picked up the phone and made the call.

Only to find out the office within the New York BMV I needed to contact was only open 8:30 AM to 12 Noon Monday through Friday.  And it was 12:15.  On Friday.

The following Monday, I was able to connect with actual human beings (after roughly an hour on hold and navigating menus) in both states.  In New York, I was informed "Andrew R. Fuller" had been running drugs in 1996.  As for myself, I was a sophomore in high school in Angola, Indiana.  And our drug czar apparently did not even have the same birth date.  I was told the proper material to fax to prove my innocence, including a type-written letter, and I complied within minutes.

In Pennsylvania, my namesake had made a habit of evading law enforcement.  Here, I had to mail a notorized letter and four pieces of evidence to prove my innocence.  They would mail a letter back to me.  That shouldn't take long, right?

It took four months.  When I finally received the letter stating my clearance, I triumphantly marched back into the Linton branch to begin the process again.

Only to find out I was still wanted in New York.

I showed Kerri the receipt of the fax I sent to submit my ID materials to prove I was innocent there.  She got on the horn (it was 11:45 AM - my fingers were crossed) and learned from New York that the material I had submitted "was not legible."  Evidently, they're not fond of the Times New Roman font on the East Coast.

Kerri volunteered to write a letter on Indiana BMV letterhead and fax it immediately, along with all the appropriate evidence proving my innocence, to New York.  Props to her for this effort.  She sent it, and I figured I would hear back in a week or two.  Instead, Kerri called a couple hours later to say she had received a fax from New York stating I was clear.

I returned to the BMV after work that Friday figuring I would at last put all this behind me.  I took the photo, signed my name on the computerized pad, and repeated the process I had now completed a half dozen times prior. 

Only to find out I was still wanted in New York.

Apparently the Empire State was quick on the fax, not so quick to actually push the button on the computer to take me out of the system.  Kerri made several calls to Indiana BMV officials.  (By now, she was getting as annoyed as I was.)  We ran the background check three more times.


And each time, I was still wanted in New York.

It would have been funny if it was happening to anyone else: I and two BMV workers are sitting in the branch, staring at a piece of paper saying I'm not wanted in New York, only to be at the mercy of a computer and a system that said I was.  At 6 PM on Friday evening, an hour after the BMV had closed, we called off the hunt.

Tuesday, Kerri called again stating I had, indeed, forever and amen, been cleared from the system.  I marched back in to the branch today with no small amount of nerves.  They ran the background check.

And I was clear in New York.

All told, it was 4 months of waiting, and 6 hours in the BMV to resolve the problem.  Along the way, a couple of important lessons were reinforced:

First, the people who work at the BMV are as much a slave to the system as you are.  Don't blame them personally if things get fouled up.  Kerri and Kim went out of their way to help me, and I am truly grateful for it.

Second, all the good people in the world will not be able to overcome unnecessary bureaucracy.  Even the best intentions of large government programs (the Real ID Act in this case, which, ironically, I shilled for while I worked in politics) will inevitably be drowned in red tape and lead to assumptions like an Indiana high school sophomore moonlighting as a New York drug lord.  There is no substitute for good, old fashioned human reasoning and service to our fellow man.

Oh, and one more lesson.  Name your children the most unusual names you can think of.  You just may save them a world of grief in 16 years.

You feel me?



AF