As if it didn’t  have enough to worry about with the recent snag-plagued computer upgrade, the Barton County Treasurer’s Office is now being told by state official it has to strictly enforce the requirement that current insurance information be presented when vehicular tags are renewed.
“We used to be able to fudge a little bit,” said County Treasurer Kevin Wondra. If the insurance card shown wasn’t up to date, the office could call the agent to get confirmation.
This is not the case now. The new registration system installed by the Kansas Department of Revenue in May now allows county offices to scan the insurance card in with other documentation, making it a part of the same record. This could not be done before.
“This is not a new law,” Wondra said. “They are just putting more emphasis and stress on it now.”
Those coming into the office for renewals without the proper information will be asked to retrieve it. “We’ve had to turn people away. The customers have not been happy,” he said.
The state will send out auditors randomly to counties to see if the rules are being enforced.
This comes amid continued customer and Treasurer’s Office staff frustration over the new computers. The system was installed to replace a 30-plus-year-old mainframe system used for driver licensing, motor vehicle titling and registration, and inventory management with a single, more easily operated system. The switch involved treasurer’s offices and drivers license offices, and allowed for better integration between the two.
That was in theory.
“They still have a lot of bugs to work out,” Wondra said. System crashes for at least 45 minutes at the state level were a daily occurrence at the end of June, culminating with a nearly day-long outage on June 30. This was the last day of the month and the office was swamped with residents.
So far in July, the system has come close to failure, but has stayed up and running. “They’re working on it,” he said.
“It’s hard to get any help from Topeka,” Wondra said. The state office is short-handed and the phone lines are busy nearly constantly.
“It’s not where they want it to be,” he said. “But, its better than it was.”
Most renewals are going through, but he said there may be delays.