Kentucky’s organ donor registry could shrink under new rules taking effect this spring pertaining to driver’s licenses.
If you're an organ donor chances are you probably signed up when you first got your driver license or renewed it. When Kentucky begins rolling out new standard licenses and voluntary travel IDs in March, you'll be given a choice if you are 21 years or older of renewing your license every four or eight years. Shelley Snyder with the non-profit group Trust for Life says that will mean fewer people visiting circuit court clerk’s offices.
"Currently, at a four-year license, we're seeing about a million people a years and when that stretches to eight years, we're only going to see about 500,000," she said.
Trust for Life is working with a state senator on a bill that would allow people the option of adding their names to the donor registry by visiting Kentucky-Online-Gateway, the state’s one-stop portal for government services. Snyder says the commonwealth has one of the fastest-growing registries in the nation and hopes new driver’s license rules don’t slow that momentum. About 60 percent of Kentuckians are registered organ donors.
