Renewing your license plates isn't always easy, and for some people in South Dakota it was even tougher on Friday.

KDLT's Caiti Blaze reports that due to a technical issue, dozens of people in Sioux Falls waited in a long line for hours at the Minnehaha County Administration Building.

At around eight o'clock Friday morning, Minnehaha County and several other counties began to experience technical issues in South Dakota's vehicle registration renewal system. With the system down for almost four hours, the line remained long throughout most of the day. "It's been chaos," said Minnehaha County Treasurer Pam Nelson.

What was supposed to be a normal day for employees and customers at the Minnehaha County Administration Building soon turned into a waiting game. Nelson said, "The network wouldn't work at all. We couldn't do anything with motor vehicle stuff from 8:00 until about 11:45."

According to the Bureau of Information and Telecommunication, a software setting was changed, creating a road block between some counties and the state's system. "The only word we got from the state was that they said it was a fluke,” said Nelson.

But Minnehaha County and other areas in the state didn't know what the problem was until hours later. Nelson said, "They weren't sure how long it was going to take them to be up and running again, or how long it would take us to get to be up and running again."

People like Joni Vaughn got to the administration building bright and early in the hopes of getting license tabs for her new vehicle. Vaughn said, "I was shocked when they said the system went down."

Vaughn returned to the building in the afternoon, but the length of the line hadn't changed.
"It didn't surprise me because I knew a lot of people were coming before the new regulations start,” said Vaughn.

New regulations to increase the price of license tabs will go into effect on April 1 as part of Senate Bill 1, a move to fund improvements for South Dakota's infrastructure. Tori Anderson said, "I know tags are going up 20 percent, so I definitely wanted to save a little bit of money."

While it may have been a long line for Joni Vaughn, Tori Anderson had a much shorter wait after getting to the building a little after three o'clock. "When I saw the line initially it looked extremely long and super overwhelming, but it moved along a lot quicker than I thought it would so I'm leaving happy,” said Anderson.

Pam Nelson says traffic at the administration building has been very busy the last few days with it being the end of the month and expects it to be like this until April 1. However, she says as long as systems are up and running, people shouldn't have to deal with Friday’s long line again.

The South Dakota Department of Revenue released a statement Friday afternoon saying the technical issue did not affect and was not related to the Highway Funding Bill updates that will go into effect on April 1.

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