Like most basic, necessary services of government, motor vehicle administration is often atrocious, but it needn’t be. Two decades back, while I competed to displace a long-standing Indiana political establishment, making fun of the state’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles was a fixture of my stock speech. The more change a public administration aspires to make, the more important the quality of highly visible, firsthand services becomes. What went into that involved more than keeping BMV visit times to 10 minutes, but I’ve never doubted that fixing that agency was an essential element. And it plainly created a more receptive environment for a long string of major changes we pursued in other areas.

Source: Washington Post March 31, 2026 23:15 UTC