New teen driving rules create new mess to fix

You've got to wonder. Does the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet get management advice from the U.S. State Department? State is the place where no one reacted strongly or fast enough to a huge rise in passport applications that easily could have been anticipated.

Enter the Transportation Cabinet, which has implemented new rules for teen drivers. One of the rules is that teens who want to start driving must meet a new minimum grade requirement that includes a form signed by the school. Teens can lose their licenses if they don't pass at least four classes each semester, if they drop out or if they have too many unexcused absences.

Trouble is, no one bothered to tell private schools -- which serve 20 percent or more of the school-age kids in Northern Kentucky -- that they would have to give forms to the students. Thus, a student such as Jennifer Scanlon of St. Henry High School (pictured) was out of luck on what should have been an exciting day -- obtaining her first temporary driver's license. Regulations even go so far as to require the form to be on the high school letterhead, and that the principal's signature be in blue ink.

Is someone actually getting paid in Frankfort to make sure the ink color is correct?

Oh, and many schools haven't yet received the username and password to report the names of failing students to a secure Web site. It's yet another unfunded task for the schools to perform -- let alone the Orwellian implications of a Web site that lists "failing students" for all in the bureaucracy to see. Will students who turn things around be removed from this list as fast as they're added?

Here's hoping the Frankfort bureaucrats are still waiting for passports.