This past week my office received an email detailing a nightmare a constituent (we’ll call him “John Smith”) from Caroline County had while renewing his Virginia’s driver’s license.

The constituent first got his Virginia driver’s license in 1989 and has renewed his driver’s license successfully three times since.   

A few weeks before its expiration, John Smith went to renew his license and was told there was an outstanding suspension warrant on his license from South Carolina.  Virginia, therefore, could not renew his driver’s license until he got his record cleared with South Carolina.

The constituent was trapped – his employment requires him to have both a valid driver’s license and a high level security clearance, which are now both in jeopardy because of this outstanding warrant.

So, Mr. Smith contacted South Carolina and figured out that the warrants were for speeding tickets he got in 1984 and 1985 while he was young, irresponsible and stationed in South Carolina.  As Mr. Smith was aware his South Carolina license was suspended in 1985 for nonpayment of those tickets.

The catch?   Before leaving South Carolina in 1987, Mr. Smith went to court and paid all outstanding fines, interest and all court costs – thereby clearing his license.  But last month, a clerk in South Carolina said they would need proof he had cleared his record by providing them with receipts so they could update their database.

Trapped again - South Carolina had recently completed entering all their past DMV information into a national database to comply with federal regulations. Obviously, they skipped entering the court proceedings which had cleared Mr. Smith’s record.

South Carolina DMV told Mr. Smith he would have to get letters from the six counties where the tickets were issued 25 years ago.  Then he would have to send the letters to the South Carolina’s DMV and pay a fine of $100 for each suspension notice (total, $600) before they could remove the warrants.

The computer did not say which counties issued the warrants.  But the clerk told Mr. Smith their DMV would be happy to do a records search for $6.00 per violation and would mail him the information in, oh, about 4-6 weeks.

Mr. Smith knew he had settled everything in Charleston’s District Court.  So he decided to contact the clerk’s office there before his Virginia license expired.  

Whoa, Nellie!!  It would take 4-6 more weeks to get information from Charleston because they would have to search their paper records.  But wait, there’s more!  Charleston’s Clerk said there was an 85% chance that the records were destroyed during Hurricane Hugo.

Trapped – Mr. Smith paid his speeding tickets, fines, fees, interest and court costs in the 1980’s but has no record because, well, it was nearly 25 years ago.

We have helped Mr. Smith get a temporary license so he can sort this mess out, but as for South Carolina?  That’s a trap my office can’t spring.