Questions and concerns were raised about hiring quotas for minorities and females, as well as the hiring of a DEI recruiter at the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), during a House Select Committee on Government Efficiency hearing on the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles (NCDMV) on Wednesday.
Rep. Brian Echevarria, R-Cabarrus, asked NCDOT Secretary Daniel Johnson, who was appointed three weeks ago after the retirement of Joey Hopkins, about quotas that DOT reportedly had for hiring minorities and females. In the DOT’s 2024 annual report the agency set a hiring percentage target for women and minorities to be a “diverse and inclusive organization.”
Johnson responded that they want the best people to work for them and that they have a diverse workforce, reflecting the communities in which they operate. He added that the DOT must comply with state and federal laws regarding discriminatory issues, and equal opportunity employment.
Echevarria argued that the report states one of the goals is to have employees whose ethnicity is identified as a minority to be between 22% and 31% and women or gender-identified as female, 23% and 48%.
Johnson said he hadn’t look at the report in a while, but would review it.
“So, what you said was a bit of a mixed bag because you said we want the best people, but that specific goal has race, gender, and ethnicity targets,” Eschevarria told Johnson. “Now I understand that you didn’t make that goal, but you do sound like you agree with it, which means that it will likely be in your strategic report if something doesn’t change.”
Rep. Wyatt Gable, R-Onslow, asked Johnson if the DEI Recruiter position created in 2021 with a salary of $88,000 was currently an active position in the DOT. Johnson said he couldn’t answer that and would have to get back to him. Gable chided him for not knowing, as he has been with the DOT since 2019.
According to LinkedIn, there is a an employee currently listing “DEI Recruiter for NCDOT” as a title since November 2021, with a salary matching the employee name listed as $88,008 in the State Employee Salary Database search on the Office of the State Controller website.
House Bill 171 was passed earlier this year to bar state agencies from DEI policy, but it was vetoed by Gov. Josh Stein. It is on the House calendar for November 17th for a potential veto override vote.
DOT budget growth
Echevarria also asked Johnson how the DOT plans to spend more efficiently, noting that its budget has grown from $3.2 billion to $5.6 billion since 2015. Johnson said the department faces the challenge of aligning funding with projects and finding the right balance moving forward, something he is currently reviewing.
Rep. Charles Miller, R-Brunswick, told Johnson the ferry workers in Southport are also experiencing low morale, “just as bad as the DMV.” He gave an example of only one of the two ferries working sometimes. Johnson said he would look into it.
NCDMV slowly improving but more change is needed
Lawmakers also heard from officials from the North Carolina Office of the State Auditor (NCOSA), and Paul Tine, NCDMV Commissioner, that things are slowly improving at the NCDMV, but more needs to be done.
NCDMV serves more than 8 million people and generates about $2.2 billion each year.
NCOSA officials reiterated much of what the department’s audit, released in August, including that NCDMV generates 30% of NCDOT revenue, but only 2.8% of DOT’s spending goes to the DMV. Also, only 31% of DMV staffing requests were included in DOT budgets.
Department officials also discussed bringing their decades-old IT system up to date, something the recent audit identified as a pain point at DOT.
Rep. Allison Dahle, D-Wake, said the DMV must keep pace with the state’s growing population, up about 30% over the past 15 years. Meantime, the number of driver’s license examiner positions has only increased by 52, or 10%. She also stated that former DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin had requested a new computer system, but the legislature chose not to fund it.
Rep. Zach Hawkins, D-Durham, echoed her concerns saying Goodwin asked for funding but didn’t receive it, despite the General Assembly setting aside money for IT modernization.
A staffer from Fiscal Research stated during the meeting that the General Assembly has funded multiple IT modernization projects since about 2013 and about $160 million had been set aside over the last 10 years, but only $30 million had been spent.
Echevarria agreed that while money, especially for recruiting and retaining employees, was important, workplace performance is far more impacted by culture and training.
“This is a leadership problem,” he said. “I think we have to put responsibility where it belongs for the successes and the failures there’s been improvements, and those improvements are at the feet of the commissioner. There are also tremendous failures at the feet of the commissioner, but we have to have a change in workplace culture, or it doesn’t matter how many taxpayers we extort more money from to fix it.”
Committee co-chair, Rep. Keith Kidwell, R-Beaufort, said the DMV hasn’t improved much, noting that two days ago, he received an email from a constituent who said they couldn’t get an appointment anywhere in the state for his son to take a driver’s license exam.
“We need to fix that, and we need to fix that not tomorrow, we need to fix that yesterday,” he said.
Tine acknowledged that, while not everything can be fixed in the short time he has been in office, things are slowly improving. He noted that he has visited 112 out of the 113 DMV offices, listened to employees’ concerns, and maintains weekly communication.
TIne said 87% of their customers come into an office without an appointment and are still being served.
Among the improvements Tine noted are:
- Average customer wait times had dropped 31% to about 90 minutes, down from more than two hours in July.
- Eighty-seven new driver’s license examiners were hired.
- New scanners are saving up to 90 seconds per transaction, or about 100,000 more transactions each year.
- Taking walk-ins all day and a new queuing system that will text a link allowing you to view your place online from your phone from anywhere.
- Four new offices in Brunswick, Cabarrus, Sampson, and Wake counties will be opening.
He also credited SB 245, which lets both REAL ID and non–REAL ID license holders renew online for a second consecutive time, reducing the need for in-person visits. About 26,000 online transactions were completed in the last three weeks as a result.
The website is scheduled to be refreshed in the next two weeks, and a chatbot will be added to make it easier to conduct a search.
Additionally, a strategic plan is scheduled to be introduced on Dec. 1.
Tine said they should be selecting a vendor by the end of December for a new computer system, but added that it will take many years for it to be fully updated.
Echevarria had raised a concern about his own 16-year-old son being encouraged by an employee to register to vote as unaffiliated when he went to the DMV in Huntersville to obtain his driver’s license. A few years prior, his other son was mocked for registering as a Republican at a DMV in Charlotte because he was black.
“My wife was told that the DMV employees have been instructed to pre-select and steer young applicants to unaffiliated, so my question is can you clarify who gave the directive to frontline DMV staff to steer in any direction um these young people registering to vote,” he asked Tine, who said he wasn’t aware of anything like that going on since he took office, and that it was definitely against their policy and offered to look into it.
Kidwell asked for the status on North Carolina State Election Board Executive Director Sam Hayes’ request for full Social Security numbers of registered voters. Tine said the Department of Justice is currently reviewing the request.
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