TexasCHLforum.com

HerbM wrote:We really shouldn't buy into this type of reasoning:

Don't complain about the government not following the law, OR ELSE the government will change the law to make it follow their illegal behavior.

That's similar to (but not as serious as): If we bring charges against the criminal then he and his friends will attack us.

What you fail to mention is that both behaviors are documented. Witnesses against a gangbanger or mob-related defendant are "snitches" and if the defendant or his homies/"family" get the chance, they will kill them.

The government, quite literally, draws its own law. It sets the rules by which it governs itself as well as us, and those rules can be changed. There are documented cases where a deadline date was kept being pushed back until it became meaningless. The supposed transition to all government software being written in ADA is a prime example; various agencies and contractors dragged their feet until the fed.gov gave up. The same methods are being used to counter Real ID, only the disobedience is less covert; states are saying "we will not now, nor will we ever adopt Real ID standards, and there is nothing you can do to make us comply".

Now, neither case applies here; the government is governing itself, and in this case the DPS is the one dragging its feet. Possible solutions include:

* Quadrupling the size of the department to handle the extra work.
* Extending the time limit that the department has to process an application.
* Changing the law to allow issuance of a temporary license if the time limit expires; the temp is valid until the application is approved or denied. (this would only work if all applications underwent initial processing immediately upon arrival; that is obviously not the case currently as many apps are sitting unopened the entire 60 days).
* Reducing the amount of paperwork needed to process a CHL. The more stringent background check coupled with the AFIS check, registration and logging is the biggest chunk of application processing time and effort in the whole deal. If that could be streamlined, total processing time would be reduced significantly.

Mike1951 wrote:You know, the irony of all this is that the problem was created by and exists because of the very legislators that everyone is calling for help.

Had they given DPS an adequate budget, none of this would be happening!

Would you honestly have expected applications to increase by 40% over the course of about 9 months?

Seriously, they did the best they could. They have to abide by their own set of laws governing how the budget is set up. They were also worried about a budget shortfall at the time. Maybe Perry could call for an emergency session to amend the budget, but the man most directly responsible for putting the budget together in the first place is the Governor himself (one of his very few executive powers). Trust me; Perry is WELL aware of the problem in the CHL office.