Wichita’s Municipal Court is starting a program to help people in restoring their suspended driver’s licenses. The program is modeled after a similar effort in Durham, North Carolina, which was aimed at helping people remove obstacles to employment and housing.
Municipal Court Administrator Nathan Emmorey outlined the program for City Council members during a recent workshop. It’s called the Wichita Area Restoration Program, or WARP. Emmorey said the program was guided by a committee of attorneys and local agencies.
Emmorey said there are 227,000 driver’s license suspensions in Kansas, and the number has doubled since 2007. He said 20 percent of the suspensions are in Sedgwick County, and 70 percent of those suspensions are for failing to meet financial obligations. More than half the people with suspended licenses have been under suspension for more than ten years.
The goal of the program is to provide people with a roadmap to get their licenses back. Emmorey said many people don’t know what to do to get their licenses restored.
The City of Wichita is providing $150,000 for the program, and Emmorey said he sees that as seed money to leverage funding from grants and other sources to grow the program and expand services. The city is working with Kansas Legal Services on the implementation of the program.
