News

Audit: Local driver's license office among worst for service

By Lightning Reports, Published: August 4, 2025

If you were one of the unfortunate drivers who thought the Hendersonville driver’s license office was woefully understaffed, you were right.

The North Carolina Office of the State Auditor released two audits of North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles on Monday showing that the office on Four Seasons Boulevard had one of the highest examiner vacancy rates and one of the highest number of people served per examiner.

The Hendersonville office was one of 12 across the state — one of just three in Western North Carolina — singled out for poor service. The study showed that the Baystone Drive office had five examiners, a vacancy rate of 44 percent and an average salary of $42,349. Each examiner serves 34,445 people. (Other overwhelmed DMV offices in the mountains were in Sylva and Franklin.)

 The reports — including a performance audit and information systems audit — were conducted to examine the current operational challenges affecting the most forward-facing agency in state government.

“I pledged to audit the DMV to get to the root cause of its failure, and the reports dealing with licensing procedures and information systems are now complete,” said State Auditor Dave Boliek. “Our audit team has worked hard to find opportunities where the DMV can course correct and effectively serve North Carolina citizens.”

OSA’s performance audit shows the DMV experience for both customers and employees has gotten worse over the years, and that the relationship between the DMV and North Carolina Department of Transportation is a contributing factor.

Customer service has been declining, with wait times on the rise:

• Average DMV wait times stand at 1 hour and 15 minutes, up 15.5 percent since 2019.
• Data shows nearly 14 percent of visits exceeded 2.5 hours in fiscal year 2025, up about 79 percent since 2019.

Employees are struggling with workload and burnout:

• Only 47 percent of DMV workers believed DMV fostered open communication.
• 43 percent expressed negative views of prior leadership support.
• Employees cited low salary, burnout, security concerns, lack of support, and inadequate training.
• Average salaries are below $50,000 for examiners in both rural and urban areas.

Staffing levels are unsustainable:

• While North Carolina’s population has grown by 2.5 million (29 percent) in the last 20 years, driver license examiner positions have increased by only 52 positions (10 percent).
• Only 505 of the 710 driver license examiner positions are filled, and roughly 160 vacancies remain.
• In Harnett County, there is only one examiner serving over 56,000 residents.

The findings in the performance audit point toward a dysfunctional relationship between DMV and DOT. There are four systemic challenges stemming from the DMV’s governance structure as a division of DOT, including limited strategic input, restricted budget autonomy, insufficient performance data, and exclusion from key process modernization initiatives. Examples include:

• DMV generates 30 percent of DOT’s overall revenue, but accounts for only 2.8 percent of DOT’s expenditures.
• Of the 45 performance milestones in the DOT strategic plan for the 2023-2025 biennium, only two directly pertained to DMV operations.
• Only 31 percent of DMV’s staffing requests were included in DOT’s budget requests.
• DOT left out DMV customer satisfaction data in its performance report.
• DMV was excluded from planning and procurement phases of improvement efforts led by DOT.

“It’s time to solve the DMV problem. North Carolina has the will and the tools to make our DMV better. Our audit lays out some concrete steps to begin the process to fix the DMV,” added State Auditor Boliek.

To address the structural challenges identified in the performance audit, and ensure DMV can deliver timely, effective and citizen-centered services, OSA made five recommendations:

• Policymakers should consider establishing DMV as an autonomous agency or authority with direct control over its budget, strategic planning, and operations.
• DMV leadership should adopt a comprehensive strategic plan independent of DOT.
• DMV should conduct an in-depth staffing analysis to inform a multi-year, phased staffing plan that addresses examiner shortages and ensures service equity statewide.
• DMV should build and maintain a centralized performance dashboard to track and report key service metrics.
• DMV should partner with an industry expert to develop and implement evidence-based improvements to customer experience and service delivery.

Each recommendation includes specific timelines for impacted parties to follow. OSA will be following up on each recommendation to ensure progress is being made.

In addition to the performance audit, OSA conducted an information systems audit of DMV. The information systems audit found that since 2014, the DMV and Department of Information Technology —Transportation (DIT-T) initiated 46 projects that resulted in a cost of approximately $42 million. However, even with all the projects, IT modernization efforts have not produced meaningful customer service improvements, and the current DMV mainframe systems are outdated and overdue for replacement. OSA made four recommendations for the DMV and DIT-T to take to improve operations.

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