NEEDED ID DELAY

By introducing a bill to slow the pace of new federal identification rules, Sen. Susan Collins today is expected to offer a way out of a growing confrontation between Washington and the states. The bill would extend the deadline for REAL ID by two years and recognize the cost burden currently imposed on states. Additionally, it reopens the question of how much information the federal government should centralize.

This pause is needed. Last week, for instance, Georgia looked at REAL ID’s expected price tag of between $30 million and $60 million and declined to fund it. That follows Maine’s resolution to reject the program and likely precedes work in about a dozen states that have legislation against REAL ID before their legislatures. The Collins bill would reconvene the panel that made recommendations on this issue and review problems raised by the states, the standards for protecting constitutional rights and civil liberties and the security of the electronic information, among other issues.

Under the current regulations, all Americans would have a federally approved ID card by the end of next year. Usually seen as a machine-readable driver’s license, the card would be needed not only for driving but all the standard uses – to board airplanes, do business with the federal government, open a bank account. One estimate put the cost to states for transitioning to these new IDs at $11 billion.

Besides cost, opponents of the standardized identification program fear that REAL ID will result in a national database, which the federal government may not be equipped to protect. In particular, one provision would require states to verify all documents required for the issuance of a driver’s license or identification card. That would require each state to have agreements with all other states or, more likely, have a single national agreement.

Given the government’s track record on securing private information, states are reasonably worried. Not long ago, the House Government Reform Committee looked at 19 agencies going back to 2003 and found 788 separate cases of confidential data being either lost or stolen. Most of the lost data, the report concluded, was due to “unauthorized use of data by employees.”

The extended deadline proposed by the Collins legislation would give officials an opportunity to improve security at both federal and state levels. And it should find ways for Washington to help pay for this expensive program.