Palmyra drivers license office remains closed as Missouri shutters others across the state

When the state announced the Caruthersville license office was going to close, residents needing to renew registrations or driver license were directed to the closest open offices in Kennett, New Madrid and Malden. 

Those communities are all at least an hour, round-trip, from Caruthersville. The inconvenience would be compounded if, after waiting in line, the transaction couldn’t be completed for lack of a required document.

The Missouri Department of Revenue was quick to note motorists renewing vehicle registrations — but not new vehicle registrations or drivers license transactions — could do so online.

But the situation in Caruthersville is not unique, as a growing number of license offices around the state are shuttering — currently at least six of 175 — with dozens more operating under an expired contract.

A bill sponsored by state Sen. Sandy Crawford, a Republican from Buffalo, and awaiting action from Gov. Mike Kehoe, would increase the fees received by the license offices by 50%.

The transaction fee for a drivers license or motor vehicle would go from $6 to $9 for the shortest period and from $12 to $18 for the longest, six years for a drivers license and two years for a vehicle registration.

The fee on transactions is in addition to the state charge for titling and registering a vehicle and obtaining or renewing a drivers license.

The goal is to make the offices attractive to contractors and avoid closures, Crawford said during a House committee hearing in April.

“I live in a small town, and if my license bureau were to close, I would likely have to drive 45 minutes, take a half a day to drive and get my license,” Crawford said. “And so I would much rather pay $3 than take off half a day and drive 45 miles or 45 minutes to get this done.”

There is supposed to be at least one license office in every county.

“Many small agents in rural communities have stated they are closing or not rebidding upon contract expiration,” said Ryan Williams, the license office contractor in Gladstone in Clay County. “Hopefully this increase will help enough to keep them open and solvent.”

Williams is also the legislative chair of the Missouri Association of License Offices.

The smallest office currently closed is in Unionville, in Putnam County on the Iowa border. The nearest open office is in Milan, a 50-minute round-trip. The busiest is the South Springfield License Office, which processed more than 100,000 transactions in fiscal 2024. There are two other offices within five miles.

The other offices currently closed are in Cuba, Willow Springs, Sedalia and Palmyra.

License offices, also known as fee offices for the transaction fees they charge, at one time were awarded by governors as political patronage. Until 2005, there were a dozen state-operated offices in the largest cities.

A bidding and contract system was created in the following years. The fees have been raised twice previously this century, in 2003 and 2019. There are currently 16 license offices listed on the state purchasing website, including Caruthersville and Unionville, which is on for the second time this year.

“We’re the only direct interaction that most people have with the state of Missouri,” Williams said.

In fiscal 2024, license offices processed almost 9 million transactions and charged $58.4 million in fees.

The Unionville office generated $28,736 in fees on 4,519 transactions. The Caruthersville office took in $119,260 from 18,747 transactions. And the South Springfield office received fees of $702,290 to process 105,516 transactions.

The reputation of license offices is not good, as seen by comments of members of the House Commerce Committee during the April hearing.

“If I had $1 for every time my office got called for the unpleasantness of the Rolla, Missouri, office, I’d be a millionaire today,” said state Rep. Tara Peters, a Republican from Rolla in her third year in the legislature.

State Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican, said he was glad lawmakers get special service for their license plates, which have legislative identifiers. There are two two license offices in Branson.

“I’m so glad that as a representative, I get to do the things right here in the Capitol that I need to do so I can continue to serve the people instead of wait an hour and a half in line without a bathroom,” Seitz said.

During the hearing, Williams said the contract office system saves the state money.

“If the state took it over, it would be a considerable expense,” he said.

The facilities and staffing are dependent on the amount of fees an office generates, Williams said. The contractor must meet payroll, pay rent and cover office expenses from the fee revenue.

“When you have long wait times, that’s a direct result that we can’t afford to hire the staff that we need, or pay them or attract the staff that we need,” Williams said.

The issues forcing contractors to give up their offices aren’t all financial, said Terri Harris, owner of Elle Management in St. Louis. At one point, Harris operated nine license offices around the state and was the contractor at South Springfield when it closed.

The contract had been repeatedly extended, for short periods, leaving her with uncertainty about the future and making it difficult to hire staff, she said.

After 34 years in the business, including almost two decades managing license offices for others, health issues and working through bureaucratic and political issues with the department became too much, she said.

The fee increase in 2019 was welcome, Harris said, but came just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The first thing I did when we got that increase is I brought my employees’ wages up to where I could stay competitive,” Harris said. “After COVID, everything changed for all employers, and my offices were large. It required a lot of employees, and frankly, the increase that I could afford to make was eaten up when you wait 17 and a half years for an increase.”

When she surrendered the contract, Harris said, she was offering $20.50 an hour to employees.

“We couldn’t keep people at that pay rate,” she said.

The fee increases will not induce her to return to the business of operating license offices, Harris said.

The South Springfield office was on an extended contract, but the extensions were short. That uncertainty also made staffing difficult, she said. 

“We went through years of being extended, two months, three months, maybe four months at a time,” she said. “That was ridiculous.”

She was reluctant to seek new contracts because the requirements being added didn’t work in the office situations she dealt with, Harris said. Specific performance numbers for managers, who Harris wanted supervising rather than processing transactions, was one issue, she said.

“The relationship became adversarial,”

 Initial contracts are generally for five years and the bill before Kehoe allows an extension of five years at the discretion of the director of revenue.

The bill would also bar department employees from becoming contractors or part owners of a license office company for a year after leaving state employment.

The department should figure out how to give more support to the small, rural offices where fee income is low, Harris said.

The contract requirements for the Unionville office call for it to be open 24 hours a week. It processed about four transactions an hour during fiscal 2024. 

“These communities, when you close an office, they’re not going 10 minutes away to the next office,” Harris said. “They’re going counties away, right to the next office. It’s it’s tough on the community period. I also understand there is a very small profit margin in them, and that makes it difficult.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.