'There is no secret:' DMV ran REAL ID office exclusively for state employees

As people waited for hours in the heat outside DMV offices this summer, hundreds of state employees responded to an invitation to bypass the public lines and get their IDs at DMV headquarters in downtown Raleigh.

From January to August, the Division of Motor Vehicles ran a temporary office out of its training room, said Patric Bethea, North Carolina Department of Transportation spokesperson. State employees at the NCDOT and other various agencies were invited by email to make appointments to come there to get their REAL ID.

Bethea said the temporary office, meant to alleviate the rush on resources at other DMV offices brought on by the federal government's October 2020 deadline to get REAL IDs, was open for three hours a day, five days a month. In April, as the DMV started to hit its peak season, the temporary office was only open to state employees three days a month.

"We're just trying to get people as many REAL ID's as possible," said Bethea. "But there is no secret to this thing at all."

Bethea compared opening a temporary office to employees of state government, one of the state's largest employers, to the mobile units the DMV deployed to other large employers such as Bank of America, Camp Lejeune, Pfizer, and SAS.

To date, about 6,200 employees, including 411 state employees, have received REAL IDs using the DMV mobile units and the temporary office.

The agency has shut down the temporary office and most mobile units in order to catch up with growing waits times at DMV offices.