Wait, wait, don’t tell us

Tuesday, April 7, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

The average amount of time people spend waiting at the DMV has skyrocketed in Southern Nevada in the past year.

As David McGrath Schwartz reported in Saturday’s Las Vegas Sun, the average time a customer waited at the Department of Motor Vehicles’ Decatur office was 42 minutes in February 2008. This year it jumped to 69 minutes. At the DMV office in Henderson, the average time went from 43 minutes to 60 minutes. At the DMV office on Flamingo Road it went from 48 minutes to 74 minutes.

In light of those appalling numbers, consider this: The average wait at Reno’s Galletti office this February was 22 minutes, up just two minutes. The average wait time in Carson City was 11 minutes, a decrease of three minutes.

For years the DMV has tried to whittle down wait times across the state and has had some success. But the gains in Southern Nevada have reversed since Gov. Jim Gibbons took office. The governor’s state hiring freeze resulted in 150 vacancies in the DMV, which exacerbated the problem, as has the governor’s general disdain for Southern Nevada.

Gibbons’ spokesman, Dan Burns, said the governor is aware of the wait times in Las Vegas but said a planned fix — cutting offices in Northern Nevada to boost staffing in Clark County and ease the disparity — is in the Legislature’s hands.

Perhaps the governor would like to review the organizational chart. The DMV is under his control. If he were a leader, he would order the department to deploy people or extend hours in Southern Nevada. Instead, Gibbons’ only plan for the DMV has been to cut Saturday office hours in Las Vegas and Reno and further reduce the department’s workforce with unpaid furloughs, citing the state’s budget crunch. Earlier in his term he spiked a plan to raise driver’s license fees to keep up with the department’s costs.

Gibbons just doesn’t get it, but Southern Nevadans do: His incompetence means interminable waits at the DMV. It is just as well he has left the decision to the Legislature. Lawmakers should fix this mess — soon.