November 14, 2019
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety recently announced the federal government has granted Oklahoma with a REAL ID extension through September 18, of next year. This, according to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, will be the final extension needed for our state to become fully compliant with federal law as Oklahoma is set to begin issuing the updated IDs later next year.
This means the federal government will continue to re cognize Oklahoma driver’s licenses and ID cards for flying on commercial airlines or entering federal facilities until that time.
Carol Carver, owner of the Elk City tag agency says the state is implementing “mega-centers” in about six months that will handle the first and greatest influx of people trying to upgrade their licenses to the new REAL ID, IDs for those people that are needing the new IDs right away. That’ll happen around the first of May.
She says between now and the first of May, nothing is happening. People can fly and enter federal government buildings using their current IDs and licenses without a problem until next September, however, the Mega-Centers will be starting up. May begins the new updating to REAL IDs.
For those that want to update to the new REAL ID after May, the closest Mega-Centers to Western Oklahoma are Lawton and Woodward. Carver says she’ll get the equipment to offer REAL ID in about a year.
By October of 2020, Carver says, all of the local tag agencies around the state will have all the necessary equipment to issued REAL IDs.
Until then, the best thing to do – for those that fly or need to enter a federal building – is simply use a passport, if one has one.
Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005 to make driver’s licenses more difficult to forge. Oklahoma legislators in 2007 passed a bill preventing the state from meeting provisions of the act, but in 2017, state lawmakers approved legislation that allowed officials to begin work on becoming compliant including the updating the state’s entire ID system.
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