The media coup of the year and the issue that best symbolized Harvey's theories on how government should work, centered on the mundane subject of dog feces. Survey after survey showed that sidewalk dog droppings were San Franciscans' biggest complaint about city life. Mile, therefore, sponsored a bill requiring dog owners to clean up after their pets...Privately, Harvey lectured Anne and Dick, "Whoever can solve the dogshit problem can be elected may of San Francisco, even president of the United States."
--The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
Little in American life gets described as "Kafka-esque" with quite the regularity of the DMV. That's possibly a sign that fairly few people have read Kafka (updating your registration isn't really like turning into a cockroach), possibly a sign that Americans are used to pretty impressive amounts of bureaucratic efficiency, and definitely a sign that folks don't like the DMV very much. For instance: My registration and inspection expired at the same time. In order to renew my registration, I need to pass inspection. But in order to enter inspection, I need to present my registration. The DMV's answer, of course, is a five-day temporary registration that can only be obtained at their service locations. Thus an extra trip to everyone's least favorite bureaucracy. To put it slightly more succinctly: Wah. Blogger is mildly inconvenienced. But I'm interested in the why of it. There's no point of more regular contact between bureaucracy and individuals. There's no more culturally recognized irritant. It's the governmental equivalent of the dog shit problem. And it has the advantage of being concrete: School investments that improve retention a decade in the future don't assure reelection. But voters would know who to thank if they ceased dreading the DMV. As such, you'd imagine that every big city mayor would make streamlining the DMV his first order of business and talking about how he streamlined the DMV his second. The political incentives are pretty clear. And the potential political reward, when compared to the required investments, are striking. And to be fair, it sometimes happens: On February 3rd, 20009, Mayor Fenty announced that the DMV would begin issuing renewal alerts over that new e-mail technology that the kids are so enamored with. Good on ya, Mayor. But Fenty has been in office for years. He just got the DMV to adopt e-mail?
