The Saga, it continues...

December 06, 2005 | Category: Well, That Was Random

Mr. Jesse White, Secretary of State, should be sent to a special kind of place for a week. One in which he is forced to suffer all the indignities and byzantine mechanations of his own system.

Just saying.

So, I have spent over 3 hours on the phone today. Two of those hours, and I kid you not, were spent on hold. The upshot is that I have to go downtown to the horse-head statue building again and get a certified letter from the traffic court there that they have no record of the accident and subsequent judgement.

I have spoken to 6 different people.

The first told me that I had to go get something called a half-sheet and special bad-driver's insurance, and keep that insurance for 3 years, and also pay $140 in fines.

The second told me to go away, there are no half-sheets for 19 year-old accidents and that I needed to file an affidavit for expungement.

The third said he knew nothing about expungements but it didn't sound right to him. He put me on hold to look up my record. I sat on hold for 28 minutes. 28 minutes, people. Afraid to hang up. But finally I had to.

I called back and sat in the "operators will be with you soon" queue for over an hour. Finally, after hangin up and trying again, I got a live body. The fourth told me that I needed to present myself in person at the Cook County 1st Circuit Court and make arrangements to pay the court fees and fines from 19 years ago (which I already did, once, 12 years ago) and then get a receipt which I would mail to Springfield with $70 in additional reinstatement fees plus the special bad-driver's insurance. For 1 year this time.

I called Cook County Circuit Court 6 times before someone answered the phone. I asked where I should go to pay these fees (that I paid 12 years ago already) so I could get my license back. They told me I was off my rocker and nothing over 7 years old is kept in the records much less scheduled for payment. They told me to call Jesse White's office back and get some clarification.

They gave me a phone number to call for Jesse White. (312) 793-5603.

It's disconnected.

I called the number I've been calling for over a year. I was hoping for someone nice and clear and intelligent. Not so much. The fifth person of the day had clearly had skipped her happy pill this morning. She told me that there was no way I'd had a legal driver's license in the last 19 years and that I'd played the system. I told them that they were wrong, and told them that I had paid the fees, the fines, had the special insurance, and gotten a letter of clearnace andmade myself completely legal. A dozen years ago. They told me I was lying. I hung up on that one.

And called back.

I got LeVonne. She was my sixth, and final, employee of Jesse White that I spoke to today. She re-iterated what Number 1 had told me about that half-sheet from Cook County saying that there was no longer any record of the accident or judgement. I made her repeat that - that I needed proof that there was nothing left. She agreed. I asked didn't her computer talk to their computer since all the computers worked for the same State? She said no, that the county and the state were different entities. I said okay, then.

She told me to get the half-sheet and mail it to Springfield with the additional $70 sincethe first $70 we paid was at a local facility and they had no record of that.

She also said that the record of my paying the fines and getting the special insurance was all in my file if someone had bothered to scroll down. Not that we're naming names, old #5 and #1.

Stay tuned....

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