REAL IDs: What You Need To Know

UNDATED -- It's time to decide if you need to upgrade your driver's license to a REAL ID or an Enhanced driver's license.

Laura Laudenbach is the Supervisor of the Downtown License Center in St. Cloud. She says in Minnesota you can renew your license anytime in the year that it expires.

REAL IDs take about eight weeks to get back from processing, and we haven't gotten official confirmation yet from TSA if you can fly with a temporary paper, so we're recommending that customers come in by July to do their renewal if they have an October flight.

If you're not scheduled to renew your license this year you can still upgrade to a REAL ID or Enhanced license for an additional fee.

She says Minnesota is offering three different types of licenses.

Your standard which is what most people have right now.  There's the REAL ID which will allow you to fly domestically or travel within the U.S. And then there's the Enhanced driver's license which will allow you to cross the border into Canada or Mexico by land or by sea.

Standard licenses and REAL IDs cost the same, but an Enhanced license is $15 more.

She says you'll need to bring with you several forms of documentation.

You have to bring in a birth certificate or a passport as one of the first documents.  Sometimes the birth certificate will be a hospital record, but that doesn't work as a document that you can provide for the REAL ID.  Or, they'll bring in any piece of mail, but it has to be specific from the list.

Besides a passport and/or your birth certificate, you also need to bring with you your original social security card -- it can't be laminated -- or a federal tax form, and you need your unexpired driver's license, a recent utility bill, or a pay stub that has your employer's phone number on it.

As of October 1st, you will no longer be able to use your standard driver's license to board domestic flights or enter federal facilities. If you're not going to do either of those things, your regular license will still work to drive. You can also use your passport, if you have one, in lieu of a REAL ID.

On the first of the year, only 10 percent of Stearns County residents were REAL ID compliant, but as of this week, that number has already jumped to 50 percent.