Sedgwick County Commissioners approve a request to add four part-time jobs to help the county tag office.
The need stems from problems with the state's new vehicle registration computer system. Wednesday morning, Sedgwick County Treasurer Linda Kizzire told commissioners thousands of records didn't transfer from the state's old computer system to the new one. She says those records now have to be entered by hand, and her department needs the extra help to do it.
Kizzire says some records are only available from the state as microfilm. She says that information cannot be sent to the county digitally, and must be sent by mail. Commissioner Jim Skelton was upset that the system is still having issues months after being installed.
"It's fascinating when we have a brand new, state-of-the-art system here, and we've got to return to microfilm and photocopies and mail which are, by far, antiquated, to make this new system work," said Skelton. "The more I think about it, the more disgusted I get about it".
When the system was installed in the spring, problems with the software led to long lines and long waits at county tag offices. The state says most of the issues have been resolved. Skelton said he is not so sure.
"I am getting calls on a regular basis from constituents who are just outraged at this, I think it's totally incompetent," said Skelton. "People get there at 6:00 in the morning and there's a line by 6:05, that is outrageous, our citizens deserve far better".
Kizzire told the commission that she expects more work to be pushed from the state to the county level. She says Sedgwick County is not the only county to have this problem. She says the state's Secretary of Revenue has put together a task force to look into on-going issues.
In this case, she says the data that did not transfer to the new system must be recreated from start to finish.
"These were just records that did not flow over to the new system, and (the state doesn't) have a mechanism to get them in, other than the individual counties being responsible to get the records in the system," said Kizzire.
The county has received some reimbursement from the state for overtime related to the computer system conversion. Kizzire says the positions added are likely temporary, and could go away once the records are put into the system.
