After a fearsome farrago of fury over the state’s complicity in providing information on Missouri CCW holders to feds at the Social Security Administration, DHS and your friendly neighborhood Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Governor Jeremiah “Jay” Nixon (D-Mizzoura) is walking things back. To those of you just tuning in, the Department of Revenue — after much legislative poking and prodding — finally admitted last month that it was scanning CCW endorsement holders’ personal identification documents and funneling them to the busy little drones D.C. And since one blatant violation of state law wasn’t enough, the Highway Patrol figured that sharing lists of CCW holders with our benevolent overlords too would be twice the fun. To top off the nose-thumbing, when a Senate committee finally dragged Revenue Department Director Brian Long before them last week, he told them to FOAD as he had no intention of halting the program . . .
That’s the same Brian Long who announced his resignation Monday after all of three months on the job. Poor Bri. It looks like the job just proved to be too much for him.
“My brief tenure as director has taken a toll on me and my family that I could not have anticipated when I accepted the position in December of 2012,” Long said in his resignation letter, addressed to Nixon. “I leave with great admiration for the dedicated and hard-working employees at the Department of Revenue and for the leadership of your administration.”
Chalk it up to wanting to spend more time with his family. That, and a call he no doubt got over the weekend from the Gov’s chief of staff trying to staunch some serious bleeding.
Speaking of the Jay-bird, he’s poo-poo’d the whole mess as a tempest in a Tenifer teapot since the story originally broke.
“This Department of Revenue and this state of Missouri is not collecting a bunch of un-useful data to send to some sort of magical database someplace to mess with people – it’s not happening, okay?” Nixon said. “They’re just not doing it, I mean, you know that and I know that.”
Making the boss a blatant liar is never good for your career. Hence Long’s exit, stage left.
Now Nixy seems to have concluded the heat he’s getting for ratting out Show Me State concealed carriers more than outweighs any perceived benefits the state may be getting from its supine federal cooperation. He’s decided to shut down the DOR shredding scanning party and promised to delete concealed carriers’ documents fromt the DOR system.
From riverfronttimes.com:
Gov. Jay Nixon announced today that the Department of Revenue will no longer scan or retain certificates of qualification for Concealed Carry Weapon (CCW) endorsements.
“It has been determined that the scanning and retention of concealed carry certificates are not essential to the integrity of the license issuance process,” Gov. Nixon said. “We will continue to work with policymakers to ensure the security and privacy of our license issuance process.”
Still, state Republicans aren’t happy. The DOR’s activities appear to be in direct contravention of a Missouri law prohibiting compliance with the federal REAL ID act and they’ve shared their thoughts on the matter with the newly named interim director. And while Mr. Long becoming a speedbump under the Governor’s bus is intended to cool things down a little, this doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.