The state of Minnesota said it has paused issuing non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses after the U.S. Department of Transportation threatened to withhold federal funding.
Minnesota has 212,327 standard CDL holders and 2,117 non-domiciled CDL holders, according to the state’s Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) division. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said one-third of non-domiciled CDLs issued by the state were done so illegally. However, Minnesota’s response claims there were “inaccuracies” in some of the federal government’s findings.
“Earlier this year, we audited our processes and identified and corrected some administrative errors with issuing non-domiciled CDLs, including notifying customers who were ineligible that their CDL privileges were canceled,” DVS Director Pong Xiong said in a statement. “As DVS was implementing the corrective action, FMCSA conducted an audit that affirmed the issues already identified by DVS and have now been corrected. DVS was aware of, and prepared for, most of these findings.”
Minnesota said it will seek “some required corrections that seem to be tied to the new CDL rules issued on Sept. 29. Those rules were not in effect at the time of the audit and are subject to a court-ordered stay by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.”
Xiong added: “We have no evidence Minnesota non-domiciled CDL holders compromised public safety in any way.”
