STATES PICK UP HILL SUPPORT FOR FIGHT AGAINST REAL ID

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ERIC KELDERMAN, STATELINE - Two states leading a revolt against the Real
ID Act have picked up new firepower in the U.S. Senate in their fight to
roll back an unprecedented federal overhaul of state driver's licenses.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is now
spearheading an effort in Congress to undo the 2005 law that will
require states to verify the identity of all 245 million licensed
drivers and impose a common set of security features on license cards.
Leahy, who can use his post to push legislation to the
Democratic-controlled Senate, has signed on to a bill to repeal the Real
ID law and revive a previous state-federal partnership effort to make
driver's licenses more secure. A bill in the U.S. House, also now in
Democratic hands since the 2006 election, has attracted the support of
25 co-sponsors.. . . 

Driving the momentum in Congress, Montana and Washington state last
month passed nearly unheard-of statutes rejecting the federal law, which
they charge will infringe on their residents' privacy and saddle states
with a $14 billion unfunded mandate. More than 30 other states have
taken up similar bills or resolutions calling on Congress to repeal Real
ID or fully fund it.

Pietro Nivola, a scholar on federalism with the Brookings Institution,
said states have wrestled with mandates from Washington, D.C., since
President John Adams' tenure but rarely have passed laws defying Capitol
Hill. In 1798, legislatures in Kentucky and Virginia passed resolutions
declaring a right to nullify federal statutes  -  a protest against laws
cracking down on immigrants as the country prepared for war against
France. . .

More commonly, as with a federal law stiffening drunken-driving
enforcement, states have dragged their feet until the threat of losing
federal funds made them toe the line. Delaware, for example, waited
nearly a decade to adopt Congress' 1996 mandate setting a .08 percent
blood-alcohol content, but acted in time to save $3.3 million in
transportation funding.

Money also has been the carrot keeping states from outright rejecting
President Bush's No Child Left Behind education law, which state
lawmakers across the political spectrum also have challenged as an
unfunded mandate and an intrusion on traditional state control of
schools.

Nearly half of the states and several local school districts, most
recently in Virginia, have threatened to abandon the law, which requires
annual testing in reading, math and science and penalizes schools that
miss progress goals. But no jurisdiction has flatly repudiated the act
because they would have to forfeit federal money, which accounts for
about 8 percent of public education funding. A Connecticut lawsuit that
sought to overturn the law failed in September 2006.

http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=206433

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