Driver S License

NEW YORK -- Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced yesterday that he was scrapping his plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, saying that overwhelming public opposition had destroyed the proposal's chances. "It does not take a stethoscope to hear the pulse of New Yorkers on this topic," Spitzer said during a news conference in Washington, adding that "the legislative process and any number of mounting obstacles would have prevented us from moving forward." Spitzer, a Democrat, proposed the initiative in September in an effort to improve safety in New York, home to more than 1 million undocumented immigrants -- many of whom are driving without licenses.

Fellow students, friends and family members yesterday mourned the death of Marc David Levy, a promising painter with an eccentric flair who was killed Friday when a driver fleeing police slammed into his car.Levy, who turned 21 last month, was a senior painting major at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, a school of 1,200 in downtown Baltimore.Levy was driving his Honda Civic when a 1999 Nissan Altima with at least two police cruisers following it ran a red light at East 27th and St. Paul streets and broadsided him.Agent Ragina L. Cooper, a Baltimore police spokeswoman, said police had recognized the driver of the Altima and, knowing that he did not have a driver's license, pulled him over near Barclay Elementary School at East 29th and Barclay streets.

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- For 10 years now, the teen-age driver's license -- that sacred piece of plastic that confers mobility on the restless -- has been the bull's eye of every state legislature in the South.Drop out of high school and 18 states, 12 of them in the South, will revoke a license. Many of those states will also take it away for poor grades or poor behavior. The laws have proved immensely popular with voters and politicians, who are convinced that they have found the trigger mechanism, the ultimate motivator of the American teen-ager.

STINGS used by Howard County and the Maryland State Police to catch people driving with suspended licenses leave some people vaguely uncomfortable. It shouldn't.Some liken the setup to the old speed traps that were prevalent before the interstates made it easier to avoid the small towns that ran them. Back then, a town could easily raise revenue by posting a traffic officer near a speed-limit sign. Motorists who applied the brakes too late had to pay the price.Traffic safety was the dubious goal of the old speed traps; safer roads is more clearly the object of today's operation to catch drivers with suspended licenses.

An administrative law judge suspended yesterday the driver's license of Gov. Parris N. Glendening's son, who refused to take a chemical test after his arrest on drunken driving charges in June.The decision prohibits Raymond Glendening, 19, from driving for 120 days, a typical penalty for a first-time offender who refuses to take a Breathalyzer test, according to officials at the state Motor Vehicle Administration. Glendening's license was confiscated at the completion of yesterday's hearing in Beltsville, and the suspension began immediately.

Constitutional rights are not `boat shows'Recently, the mayor of Annapolis announced that city officials are considering charging a fee to organizations that come to rally, protest or otherwise make their views known in a law-abiding way to their elected representatives in Annapolis.The Associated Press reports that one group, which holds the annual "March for Life" in Annapolis, might face an estimated $5,400 fee for police protection at its planned 1999 march.Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson told the AP that he sees no difference between legislative rallies and other events such as the annual boat shows.

You remember the feeling: hands trembling slightly, butterflies doing a trapeze act in your stomach, a vaguely metallic taste in your mouth.It was your 16th birthday, a freezing day in December, snow light as talcum powder dusting the sides of the roads. You were about to take your road test. The Holy Grail of suburban adolescence -- a driver's license -- was shimmering, finally, within your grasp.Your tester was a small, frail-looking man with a face like one of those brooding stone statues on Easter Island, only not as cheerful.

A 90-YEAR-OLD woman in New Jersey is beaten and robbed by a home-health aide, who turns out to be a drug addict.In New York, a home-health aide steals jewelry and cash from a string of frail clients.Again in New York, a live-in aide is charged with stealing the life savings of her 94-year-old Alzheimer's patient -- going so far as to sell her house.When we need home care, or our elderly parents do, who, exactly, are we inviting in?About 7 million older people received help at home during some part of 1996 (the most recent data)

Not making your child support payments? Then forget about having a Maryland driver's license.That has been the case for tens of thousands of delinquent parents who have lost their licenses in the past three years, and the suspensions have led to the collection of more than $103 million in child-support payments during that time, officials said yesterday.In releasing the numbers, Gov. Parris N. Glendening said the suspensions are an effective tool to force deadbeat parents to meet their obligations.

IT'S A CONSPIRACY!" my son fumed as we once again left the Motor Vehicle Administration. "They don't want anyone to get their driver's license."Ignoring his rants, I watched as he stomped off to the car and the further humiliation of the passenger seat.Neither of my sons passed the written driver's test on the first try. Or the second. Or the third. It's not that they're bad drivers. Driving is not the issue. It's the written test. According to the Formwalt boys, no one is asking the right questions.

A job fair will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at Fort Meade, with more than 80 potential employers recruiting. The Fort Meade Veterans Job Fair, run by military offices and the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, is open to veterans and nonveterans. The program will take place at Club Meade, 6600 Mapes Road, and will include information sessions on federal resumes. Among the jobs are those in health care, public safety, administrative work, logistics and computers.

Judges will have broader authority to take guns away from the subjects of domestic violence orders starting today, under a pair of laws that are among several new statutes officials hope will make the state safer. Dozens of laws approved by the General Assembly and signed by the governor earlier this year take effect today. The new laws also include sweeping environmental policy changes and an increase in weekly unemployment benefits to a maximum of $410 starting next week. Many of the public safety measures are aimed at drivers.

A Howard County jury took an hour Tuesday to find a 38-year-old Carroll County man guilty of using a high school friend's identity to obtain a Florida driver's license so he could avoid prosecution for driving after his own Maryland license had been revoked. Gerald Titus Jr. of the 2200 block of Gillis Road in Woodbine will be sentenced by Judge Louis A. Becker III in October. Titus, who seemed on the verge of accepting a plea that would have carried an 18-month sentence in county jail, faces up to 3 1/2 years in a state facility.

Applicants for a Maryland driver's license will have to demonstrate their skills on the road as well as on an off-road course, the head of the state Motor Vehicle Administration said Thursday. John T. Kuo, the MVA administrator, said an on-road pilot project in Frederick and Waldorf that began in December has been successful. Kuo said the new test, which splits the 15-minute driving test between on-road and off-road segments, has been especially well-received by parents. Driver's license applicants were less enthusiastic, he said, adding that the new test is tougher than the old. "It's really a better gauge of the young driver's ability to drive behind the wheel," Kuo said.

If Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration chief John Kuo doesn't believe he has the power to keep a driver's license from Frederick Henry Hensen Jr. and other serial speeders, he hasn't read the law. The state's transportation article says quite plainly the MVA "may suspend, revoke, or refuse to issue or renew the license" of any driver "who has been convicted of moving violations so often as to indicate an intent to disregard the traffic laws and the...

One way or another, Maryland is going to have to meet federal standards for driver's licenses under the Real ID program. The only question is whether the state legislature does so while extending some understanding to the state's immigrant community. From the start, Real ID has been a flawed tool in the federal effort to improve national security. By creating a de facto national ID card but shifting the burden of such a program to the states, Congress foolishly enlisted Motor Vehicle Administration clerks to the front lines of national defense.

The head of Maryland's Motor Vehicle Administration calls Frederick Henry Hensen Jr. "a menace to highway safety." The prosecutor who put him in jail says he has no business having a driver's license. But nothing, it seems, can keep Hensen off the road. In 1999, Hensen, then 22, was convicted in Carroll County Circuit Court of manslaughter by automobile in the death of Geraldine "Geri" Lane Wu. A jury found that a road race on Route 140 involving Hensen and two other drivers led to the crash that killed the popular middle school teacher and seriously injured her daughter.

GOP cancels support for driver's permit bill Republican lawmakers rescinded their support Friday of a proposal that would require Marylanders to show proof of U.S. residency when obtaining a new driver's license. They objected to a provision added late Thursday that would permit people already licensed to renew without documenting their legal status. Those licenses would be marked "not federally compliant" and would not be accepted at airports. Del. Ron George, an Anne Arundel County Republican who has sponsored "lawful presence" bills for years, said the amendment would create a confusing "two-tier" system.

Proposals to raise the legal driving age to 17 or older have generally met with strong resistance in Maryland and elsewhere despite safety concerns. If inexperienced drivers are the problem, such a policy would simply delay the inevitable. The latest report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety makes the case that age matters, however. And it has compelled the respected safety advocacy organization to call on states to raise the driving age to 17 or even 18 - as in many industrialized nations.

No driver's license? No problem. Or so 55-year-old Richard Samuel Dorsey Jr. seems to think. The Annapolis-area man has been convicted six times of driving on a revoked or suspended license. He also has three DUIs, more than a dozen traffic convictions and 40 instances of failing to appear in court, police say. Yet there he was Tuesday evening, driving around the state capital in a cream-colored Cadillac until an officer pulled him over for speeding. "The guy cooperated - I guess he's used to it," said Officer Hal Dalton, a spokesman for the Annapolis Police Department.