(Spirit Lake)—Effective this past Tuesday, January 15th, the state of Iowa began offering what’s known as REAL ID driver’s licenses and identification cards. This includes the Dickinson County driver’s license station at the Treasurer’s Office in the courthouse in Spirit Lake.
County Treasurer Kris Rowley tells KUOO news REAL ID is a product of the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack and stems from the REAL ID Act of 2005 passed by Congress. Rowley says eventually, a REAL ID will be required for any official federal purpose, including flying…even domestically. If you don’t plan to do any of that, your regular Driver’s License will still be fine…(click here for comment.) “Your regular licenses are fine for driving. There’s no problem with that. It’s just that down the road when the federal government begins to implement their end of the real ID. You’ll need to have either a passport to fly on any commercial aircraft or to enter any nuclear plant or to enter any federal building that requires any identification, or you’ll need to the real ID that shows you’ve been screened through the federal end.”
Rowley says the deadline for getting the REAL ID for those purposes mentioned earlier, including flying, depends upon when you were born…(click here for comment.) “That they’re saying right now is that if you are born after December 1st, 1964 you’ll need to have a real ID to fly, or a passport, beginning December 1st 2014. If you were born prior to December 1st, 1964 you’ll have until December 1st 2017 to get your real ID or passport if you want to fly. Now if you don’t fly, you don’t have any plans to enter a federal building or go into a nuclear plant, you wouldn’t necessarily need any of this. You can keep your regular license. But if you do have those plans I would go ahead and just get it and not wait until the last minute so you’re scrambling.”
If you’re a new driver or a driver who has moved here from another state, Rowley says the REAL ID requirement for obtaining a driver’s license or ID card is effective immediately.
Rowley says you’ll need to bring plenty of documentation with you to fill out the paperwork…(click here for comment.) “It’s very similar to the procedures for getting a passport. If you have a passport you can bring that in and that will help facilitate some of it. But if you don’t have a passport you need to bring in your certified birth certificate, no matter where you were born you need to bring that in. And, also, your social security card, if you had a name change that your name is no longer what was on the birth certificate, you need to bring in documentation that shows proof of that. So it would be like a marriage license so it has an authorized seal from a district court or Recorder’s Office or a court document showing a divorce. You need to show that name change chain so that the name we’re issuing in traces back to your birth certificate name. And then you also need to bring in some documentation, a couple of pieces that show your physical address, along with your current name, and not a post office box but a real physical address so we can prove you actually live here and can tie your address to who you are. So that could be a voter registration card or an insurance card that has an address with your name or telephone hookup, it could be your bank account statement, just something that has that information on it.”
Rowley says the REAL ID card is the latest tool in the arsenal to also help guard against identity theft and other forms of fraud.
Anyone wishing to get a REAL ID-marked card right now can do so by bringing the needed documents to prove identity and residency to a state or county driver’s license station and apply for a duplicate card. The cost for a duplicate license or ID is $1.00.
