Senate panel narrowly OKs creating a driver's card

Citing concerns about undocumented workers casting ballots and the increasing use of Utah drivers' licenses as a springboard for illegal residency in many other states, a Senate committee narrowly approved a bill Wednesday creating a new class of driving permit.

Known as a "driver's privilege card," the permit would be given instead of a driver's license to people using the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. The privilege card would allow people to drive and get auto insurance, but because it would look different from a regular license, they could not use it as identification for other purposes.

SB227, which would create the new privilege card, initially failed on a 3-3 vote in the Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee but later passed on a 4-1 vote when Senate President John Valentine, R-Orem, voted in favor of it — and two of the senators who opposed the bill, Sen. Ron Allen, D-Stansbury Park, and Sen. Greg Bell, R-Farmington, had left the committee hearing.

"I really believe this represents a proper response to the facts found in the audit," Valentine said later, referring to last week's report from the Legislative Auditor General's Office.

That report, sought by Valentine, identified a number of possible problems with Utah's current law allowing people to be issued a driver's license with a tax ID number.

Bill sponsor Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, cited concerns raised by the audit, including that 14 people who had been issued a license with an ID number had voted in the last election and that the current law would draw illegal aliens to Utah before they went to other states.

"Utah's a magnet, a portal, for undocumented workers and illegal aliens to come to the state, get a license and leave," Bramble said.

While the bill would most heavily impact Hispanics, neither the bill nor the audit, which Republican leaders requested, are intended as means to "target a specific group or nationality," Bramble said. "Providing a legal method for illegal aliens to drive legally in Utah is not punishing them. The concern that drove this was the integrity of the voting system."

Allen said that while he was concerned about the potential abuses of the current driver's license law, he was much more worried about the potential increase in uninsured motorists and the financial problems that could cause. By requiring undocumented workers to get a different license, he said many more may not get licensed at all and therefore would not have insurance.

"I have very few people tell me about the problems they have because of undocumented workers voting, but I have a lot of people tell me about the problems they have because of uninsured motorists," he said. "I think that this will discourage undocumented workers from getting a card, and they will be uninsured. That concerns me."

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Contributing: Lisa Riley Roche

E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com