9 Investigates: Tax collector's office wait time delays

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Many people have complained about longer than usual wait times at the local tax collector's office. Channel 9's Racquel Asa discovered the problems are not just happening in Central Florida, but across the state.

Tax collectors across the state have been dealing with state systems crashing on a regular basis. The state systems are the lifeline for tax collectors' offices, which are hub for processing driver licenses, registrations and titles among other responsibilities.

Orange County Tax Collector Scott Randolph told Eyewitness News that when the systems go down, his employees can’t do anything and customers are stuck waiting.

“You don’t know whether it is going to be 10 minutes or 20 because all we get is the notice from the state it’s down,” Randolph said. “If it stays out for half an hour, I’ve got 500 people.”

A public records request of state notifications regarding system failures showed 11 days when there was an interruption. Further analysis showed some days had multiple outages, and one outage lasted four hours. Randolph told Eyewitness News it equates to the office being closed for two full days.

A spokesperson for Florida’s Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles office told Eyewitness News that the department is working as fast as it can to get the system replaced with a newer, more stable environment and will continue to work around the clock to reduce any system outages.

A spokespersron for the FLHSMV said the systems process more than six million inquiries and 2.5 million drivers license, registration and title transactions each month. The state is working on a more permanent fix after funds were recently approved by the Legislature. However, upgrades will not be in place until June 2017.

“This request was a result of the department recognizing that our decades-old system was at the end of its life and needed to be replaced,” said Beth Frady.

Cox Media Group