Posted on Thursday 27 April 2006
GovExec.com’s Daily Briefing REports this:
New Hampshire lawmakers are considering a proposal to reject a federal mandate for national identification standards.
The state House last month passed a measure, H.B. 1582, to refuse participation in a program created under a 2005 law that requires state-issued IDs to meet national standards by 2008. The New Hampshire proposal has been forwarded to the Senate for further consideration. ….
In written testimony submitted to the committee, Jim Harper, the director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, said it would be a grave mistake for New Hampshire lawmakers to stick with the REAL ID program out of fear that they would lose $3 million in federal grant money to comply with the law.
Harper cited a report released last year by a Virginia task force that estimated full compliance with REAL ID in the Old Dominion State would cost as much as $63 million per year. He also noted an estimate from the National Conference of State Legislatures that it would cost $9 billion for states to implement REAL ID nationally.
It seems that this is a topic that we should talk about at IIW next week. I titled the session “The Current Political Climate.”
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