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Sometime early next year, Tabor City, a town of about 3,800 residents on the South Carolina state line, will again have its own DMV office.
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The Division of Motor Vehicles didn’t ask to put an office in Tabor City, where the previous one closed in 2013, but state lawmakers decided it needed one anyway, and the agency says it welcomes the expansion. The state budget approved this summer provides money for what will be the second DMV driver’s license office in rural Columbus County, after Whiteville.
Tabor City is the home of Republican Rep. Brenden Jones, the House majority leader and a powerful lawmaker. A spokesman for Jones, Mason Powell, said the town asked to have its DMV office restored and will provide space in a town-owned building where the old DMV office used to be.
The budget provides $197,512 to open and staff the two-person office the first year, which includes a $1 annual lease from the town.
“Because the facility was already in place, we were able to work with the Department of Transportation, with the full support of the DMV Commissioner, to reestablish the Tabor City office at an extremely low cost,” Powell wrote in an email. “In fact, based on what we have been able to identify, this is the least expensive new DMV office established in North Carolina in at least the past two decades.”
There haven’t been many new DMV offices in North Carolina during that time. From 2003 to 2024, as North Carolina’s population grew by about 2.4 million people, the DMV was authorized to open only three new driver’s license offices and hire no additional driver’s license examiners.
That changed starting last year after State Auditor Dave Boliek determined the DMV didn’t have enough workers, as part of a larger review of the agency’s operations. Lawmakers provided money and authorization to hire 61 new license examiners for existing offices and 36 more for new offices in Fuquay-Varina and in Brunswick, Cabarrus and Sampson counties.
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This year’s budget provided money for 12 additional employees to staff two more new offices, in the Wake Forest/Rolesville area of Wake County and in Tabor City.
All six new offices are in House districts represented by Republicans, who dominate the General Assembly and specified the locations. The DMV is part of Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s administration. Last year, the DMV requested authorization to expand an office in Durham, a Democratic stronghold, but that money did not make it into the budget.
Still, DMV Commissioner Paul Tine says he has not had “any sense of political play” in decisions about where to open new DMV offices. Tine, a former Democratic lawmaker from Dare County who left the party and joined the Republican House Caucus as an unaffiliated legislator, said he thinks everyone in the General Assembly wants the DMV to succeed.
“Any time the legislature wants to give us resources to better serve the people of North Carolina, we’re going to be very happy and appreciative,” Tine said in an interview.
Tine said the DMV is working to better serve fast-growing areas such as the Triangle, where both new Wake County offices are badly needed, he said. The DMW requested the new offices in suburban Cabarrus County and Brunswick County, near Wilmington, and he noted the office on the east side of Charlotte will soon expand with nine new license examiners.
But Tine said the agency also wants to improve service in rural areas, and has used some of its new staff to convert eight rural part-time offices to full-time ones. Reopening an office in Tabor City is consistent with that goal, he said.
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“It’s about making sure we deliver good services all over the state,” he said.
This story was originally published August 19, 2026 at 2:20 PM.