DMV offices have long waits — and Miami-Dade taxpayers just got a $171M bill for a fix

Miami Herald

27-02-2025

With people camping overnight to beat the lines for appointments in Florida's overwhelmed driver's-license offices in Miami-Dade, the county's new tax collector is promising to spend big to cut down on wait times.
One problem: His plan to add more staffing and efficiency measures could cost local governments as much as $171 million in property taxes this year.
After the last election, Miami-Dade now falls under a state rule that requires elected county tax collectors to issue driver's licenses. For decades, that's been the responsibility of Florida and its nine state-run offices across Miami-Dade where people can renew their licenses, get new ones, take driving tests and access other services.
The mandate doesn't come with state funding, so Tax Collector Dariel Fernandez plans to exercise his office's authority to keep 2% of property-tax money from the county and from Miami-Dade's 34 cities, an amount estimated at $171 million this year. The county government's budget will see the biggest effect, with Fernandez's office planning to retain $118 million from the county this fall.
Fernandez, a Republican who ran a software company before winning the office in November, has not directly addressed the funding cuts to local governments but said he expects to return a large chunk of the 2% back to those jurisdictions once he gets a handle on how much it will cost to fix the current mess facing people seeking driver's licenses in Miami-Dade. But he said there's no question that effort will be expensive and require some investment of local tax dollars.
'We are delivering solutions, not excuses,' Fernandez said at an event Monday morning opening three new driver's-license windows at the Tax Collector's Office in downtown Miami.
They're the first of their kind for a county office, and the debut of what Fernandez said will be a year-long shift as Florida prepares to turn over its nine Miami-Dade DMV locations to the tax collector. (While the Department of Motor Vehicles name was retired nearly 20 years ago in a reorganization, the offices are still known as 'DMV' locations.)
Fernandez said that by the end of 2025, he expects his agency to take over all of Florida's state-run driver's-license offices in Miami-Dade. Fernandez also plans to expand beyond that, with the Tax Collector going from an agency with a single location in downtown Miami to offices across Miami-Dade, ideally bringing driver's-license services to areas that didn't previously offer them.
Fernandez's office says Florida has spent about $40 million a year running its nine Miami-Dade DMV offices, with only $9 million of that covered by the fees that are charged to residents for licenses and other services available there. In addition to taking on that expense, Fernandez said he wants to spend more on staffing and technology to speed up wait times.
Miami resident Roopesh Reddy, 40, said he and his wife had been to most of the state DMV offices in Miami-Dade in hopes of getting an appointment for her learner's permit, without success. Reddy said that included an overnight visit to the state-run Miami Gardens office, where they hoped to get to the front of the line, only to be shocked by a crowd already in place.
'My wife and I went there at 3 a.m.,' he said. Not only did they already find plenty of people ahead of them already waiting, but some appeared to be there to monetize the situation.
'People were selling their spaces for $150,' said Reddy, a software engineer.
Reddy and his wife were among the first people to try out the Tax Collector's Office's driver's-license windows, which launched service Monday morning at 200 NW Second Ave. He said it took about two hours before they could see a clerk and then learned they had to return the next day to sort out a paperwork issue. The office gave them an early-afternoon appointment for Tuesday.
'Not too bad,' he said of the wait. 'At least I got to sit inside a building.'
Nicolas Gesnel, another 40-year-old Miami resident, was there, too. He also described a failed overnight arrival at the Miami Gardens driver's-license office but an easy time getting his license renewed in downtown Miami on Monday morning. 'It took 30 minutes,' he said.
About half of the driver's-license appointments in Miami-Dade each year are from immigrants who are in the United States legally but who do not yet have a green card allowing permanent residency, according to the Tax Collector's Office. Those appointments often take longer because they involve more complicated rules, such as setting a license's expiration date to the final day a person is allowed to remain in the country legally. Should that date get extended, the person has to return to the office to get a modified license.
While license waits have long been a headache in South Florida, chaotic scenes of long lines outside South Florida DMV offices have gotten more attention in recent weeks.
Daiana Rocha, a spokesperson for Fernandez, acknowledged that DMV lines are too long but said they have been that way for a while and that Tax Collector staff do not see evidence that people needing driver's licenses today face more problems than they would have a year ago.
'We do not have data to support the idea that lines are longer,' she said. 'The lines have always been crowded, and it's always been a struggle to keep up with demand.'
Either way, Fernandez's office is pointing to the long DMV lines as evidence that Miami-Dade will need to spend much more than Florida has been spending to provide services.
'We have a crisis here,' said Andrew Lopez, director of motorist services for the Tax Collector's Office.
Fernandez says he's planning to ramp up hiring to boost the number of clerks available to help customers, expand office hours and add locations across Miami-Dade to give residents more options. His deputy says the situation is too fluid to put a firm estimate on what the improvements will cost to implement — and then maintain.
'It would be unfair to commit to a dollar amount,' said Gerardo Gomez, Miami-Dade's deputy tax collector.
Who pays for shorter wait times at the DMV in Miami-Dade?
Fernandez's planned tax diversion has local governments pushing back and urging him not to spend heavily on driver's-license offices at the expense of city budgets that fund police, parks and transportation.
In a statement, Alberto Parjus, city manager of Coral Gables, called the planned $2.6 million cost to Coral Gables a 'financial burden' in an already challenging year for local governments facing a slowing real estate market.
'The City of Coral Gables recognizes that the newly established Miami-Dade Tax Collector's Office will require an investment in infrastructure and operations,' he said. 'However, the proposed 2% fee on municipal tax collections would have a substantial financial impact on our community. … This additional financial burden comes at a time when municipalities are already navigating economic challenges.'
The tension comes from a new system of government imposed on Miami-Dade by a constitutional amendment passed in 2018 that required the county by 2025 to create three new elected offices to run agencies that were previously under the control of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava. That meant turning over the Miami-Dade Police Department to a new sheriff, the Elections Department to a new elections supervisor and the Tax Collector's Office to a new tax collector.
Only the Tax Collector switch involved a major new cost for Miami-Dade, since Florida law requires counties with elected tax collectors to also take care of issuing driver's licenses. Whatever the final amount that will be allocated for driver's-license services, it's clear the Tax Collector budget under Fernandez will be far more than what Miami-Dade spent on his office in prior years. Under Levine Cava, the Tax Collector's office spent just $33 million.
Broward is the only other Florida county also making the transition from state-run DMVs to county-run driver's-license offices this year. That's left Abbey Ajayi, who won the office in November, figuring out how to take over the existing locations she expects the state will stop running by 2026.
'Right now, we have no funding,' said Ajayi, Democrat who was manager of the agency before the 2024 election. 'Which is why we have not taken over those offices yet.'
She said her office plans to collect the 2% commission from local governments as well, with an estimated total of about $91 million. Unlike Fernandez, though, Ajayi said her office considers cities mostly exempt, based on an interpretation of state law. Municipalities in Miami-Dade are considering making a similar argument to shield themselves from the 2% collection, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
While property taxes withheld from the Miami-Dade County government will account for the bulk of the $171 million Fernandez's office plans to take, about $34 million of that total will come from city governments. That includes $13 million from Miami, $6 million from Miami Beach and $1 million from Miami Gardens.
Jason Greene, Miami Beach's finance director, said at a Feb. 21 committee meeting that the city is expecting the Tax Collector plan to increase the city's challenge of balancing its budget in 2026.
'That's really going to make things difficult,' he said.
While Fernandez won't say how much his office plans to spend from the $171 million, he promised it won't be close to that number.
'It's insane to think that,' Fernandez said when asked if he needed the full $171 million. 'We are here to spend the money on what we need to spend. … It's just what we need — and that's it.'
Miami Herald staff writer Aaron Leibowitz contributed to this report.