By Pierce O’Reilly
The president of Country Bank, Bill Burke, confirmed this week that he received a personal call from New York State Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner Ray Martinez expressing his amazement with reports that DMV officials at the Yonkers center were refusing to accept Country Bank documentation.
"They’re going to investigate the situation and, hopefully, it won’t happen again," Burke said.
Customers of Country Bank, which is popular with Irish immigrants stuck by their story this week and continued to stress that they had been refused driver’s licenses recently because desk clerks at the Yonkers DMV center said that documentation from the bank was no longer accepted.
The commissioner called to reassure Burke that his bank was not blacklisted and that documentation from Country Bank was accepted and recognized as official documentation.
"I’m happy that the situation is cleared up now," Burke said. "We’ve always worked well with the DMV and I was shocked to hear of the recent incidents. Hopefully, that’s the end of it now."
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Ken Brown, a spokesperson for the DMV, said, "If people are rejected there is always a reason," noting that something other than Country Bank documents might have been the reason why some applicants were refused licenses.
The DMV headquarters in Albany confirmed that it was only aware of one incident in which an applicant was rejected recently because of inadequate points of identification. In that case, Brown said the applicant was advised to return when everything was in order.
"Our staff are professionally trained to spot fraudulent applications and documentation," he said.
The DMV headquarters in Albany said that it has had a good relationship with Country Bank and has never had problems with its documentation.