Fixes to Kansas’ motor vehicle system need to wait while a software vendor adjusts its programming to reflect upcoming changes in state law.
But state officials said the public is unlikely to notice any delay.
Laws taking effect Jan. 1 will change truck and permit fees and allow county treasurers to sell permits to access state parks.
Those alterations are made routinely when new legislation kicks in at the start of each year, said Department of Revenue spokeswoman Jeannine Koranda.
She said that the changes have “reprioritized the list of what people were working on” but that customers headed to DMV offices across the state shouldn’t notice a difference.
“We’re at a point where we aren’t having issues that affect customer service,” Koranda said. “It’s back-end processes, not anything that affects customer care. It’s not something that you or I going to the counter are going to notice.”
The changes would have to be made regardless of whether the department had switched to a new record-keeping system early this year, she said.
“Every single state department has to do this as new laws come in,” Koranda said. “We very frequently have to make changes.”
The Revenue Department, and county treasurers who run the offices where people come to license and register their cars and trucks, had a rough spring. The Department of Revenue deployed a new computer record-keeping system that set off waves of waiting in the state’s larger counties. Those problems have mostly been overcome.
But complaints prompted the state to withhold some payments to Minnesota-based 3M Co., the company that built the software for the new system.
Updating the system to reflect changes in law will cost about $400,000.
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