STAMFORD — Scores of people line up each day outside the Connecticut Passport Agency’s office at 850 Canal St., in the city’s South End. But since the beginning of September, only a handful of them have gotten their pictures taken at the Passport Pro shop next door.
Passport Pro owner Kurt Olson blames the plunge in foot traffic at his store on a photo-taking pilot program that resumed Sept. 1 at the passport center, after the COVID-19 pandemic had forced its suspension in March 2020 several weeks into its roll-out.
If the situation does not change soon, Olson fears that Passport Pro could go out of business by the end of this year. Compounding Olson’s distress is his frustration about a dearth of communication from the Connecticut Passport Agency’s parent organization, the U.S. Department of State, and bewilderment about why the passport center is adding photography to its workload amid a massive nationwide backlog in applications.
“They just cut off the flow of business to me by taking the photos themselves,” Olson said. “It’s like a tap being turned off.”
In response to an inquiry from Hearst Connecticut Media, the State Department declined to directly answer questions about Olson. But it confirmed through a spokesperson that it is running a Secure Live Photo pilot across the U.S., at 26 passport facilities with public counters — including the Stamford site, which is the only passport agency in Connecticut.
Photos are not contracted or conducted by third-party vendors, according to the spokesperson.
“During the pilot, we only take photos for customers who appear at our agencies with no photos or unacceptable photos,” the spokesperson said in an email. “The photo pilot is designed to mitigate fraud, improve applicants’ customer service experience and modernize our operations. We will continue to run Secure Live Photo as a pilot program as we gather and analyze data to determine the program’s impact and identify next steps.”
Fighting to stay in business
Having operated Passport Pro for the past 10 years, including eight years at his current location, Wilton resident Olson, 62, has navigated an arduous past 18 months.
Passport Pro was “essentially closed” between March 2020 and March 2021 because of the pandemic, he said. After resuming with “extremely limited business,” it fully re-opened in June.
The business has survived with the help of two loans from the Small Business Administration that Olson said total in the “six-figure range.” In addition, he has received unemployment benefits.
Foot traffic at Passport Pro this past summer was averaging about 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels, a decline that Olson largely attributed to the Connecticut Passport Agency re-opening with an appointment-only policy for applicants. But he believed he could survive because he expected turnout to soon improve.
“I’ve survived through hard work,” said Olson, who has a bachelor of fine arts in photography from California College of the Arts. “I love this business. I’m very good at it, and I’m very proud of it.”
Olson said that demand dissipated when the pilot returned next door on Sept. 1. With the Passport Agency again taking photos — for free — for those with rejected pictures or without a headshot, those applicants no longer needed to go to Passport Pro, which charges $16.95 for a photo.
Before the launch of the pilot in February 2020, about 90 percent of Olson’s customers had been applicants who visited him after the Passport Agency rejected the photos they brought. In total, he was seeing a daily average of about 40 to 50 customers in his approximately 100-square-foot shop. He said he can take and process a photo in a minute.
The State Department spokesperson said Secure Live Photo “has not increased wait times for customers in Connecticut, and the number of applicants served is approximately five to seven per day.”
Wen Kai, a teacher from Manhattan, is one of those who got his picture taken inside the Passport Agency. He said officials there rejected the photo he brought because the background was too light.
He needed the passport so he could fly to London to meet his son, who is a student at the University of Cambridge.
“I thought they might tell me to go to the guy next door,” he told Hearst, while waiting outside the passport center on Sept. 24 to pick up his passport. “I imagine he (Olson) is pretty miffed because he’s set up shop here.”
A lack of communication from the State Department has further incensed Olson. He said he ran into an employee of the Passport Agency at the end of August who responded to his questioning by telling him that the pilot would soon restart. But Olson said no State Department official has ever reached out to him about the photo-taking next door.
“They act like I don’t exist,” Olson said. “It’s insulting.”
The State Department spokesperson said “programs such as Secure Live Photo are centrally managed by Passport Services in Washington, D.C., and local management is not obligated to contact photo vendors regarding changes to our operations.”
Surge in applications
The State Department has resumed the pilot as its passport agencies contend with a massive workload amid a resurgence in Americans’ travel abroad. By early summer, the department was grappling with a reported backlog of nearly 2 million passport applications. Processing times are running 16 to 18 weeks for routine applications and 10 to 12 weeks for expedited requests, according to some passport centers’ websites.
“Why are you taking on additional services when you can’t even do your core service, which is passport issuance to all the applicants who need one?” Olson said.
Passport agencies accept two types of appointments. The first group comprises those who need a passport to travel within 72 hours for a “qualifying life-or-death emergency.” Those with non-emergency “urgent travel requests” must make an appointment within three business days of their international trip.
Even with those conditions, the Connecticut Passport Agency still faces a glut of applications. On a number of occasions during the past week, scores of people have waited on lines snaking down the block to submit documentation and pick up their passports.
A large number of the applicants who come to Stamford are New York City residents. Out-of-state applicants interviewed by Hearst said they went to Stamford because it was the nearest location where they could make an appointment in time for their trips.
Holly Shallow, of Brooklyn, N.Y., had been trying since June to get a passport to visit family in Jamaica. Shallow’s first appointment at the Passport Agency on Sept. 23 fell through because the center temporarily closed that day, a development Shallow did not learn about until arriving in Stamford that morning. That setback forced Shallow to postpone flying to Jamaica by one day and return to Stamford on Sept. 24.
“My flight was for this morning, at 8 a.m. Yesterday, because they closed, I had to go through the madness of trying to figure out how to change my flight,” Shallow, a technician for a security-and-construction company, said on Sept. 24, while waiting on the passport pickup line. “Today, I got up at 3 a.m. Yesterday, I got up at 3 a.m. ... It’s a very frustrating situation.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, reiterated his call for the State Department to speed up its processing of applications.
“While I understand the financial and personnel strain the pandemic has placed on the State Department, they need to do better,” Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “As the world opens back up, too many people in Connecticut are missing long-awaited reunions with loved ones overseas because of the passport backlog.
“That’s why I’ve called on the State Department to devote additional personnel and resources to increase their capacity and return processing times to pre-pandemic levels. That won’t just help people reconnect with family, friends and business abroad, it could create jobs here at home in the federal government. That’s a good thing.”
Seeking a resolution
To help remedy the situation, Olson reached out last year to the offices of Murphy and Connecticut’s other U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal.
A subsequent inquiry from Blumenthal’s office about the program’s goals and impact on Olson’s business prompted a response last November from a State Department official who informed him about the launch of Secure Live Photo.
“I urge the State Department to limit their use of this pilot program, so it does not impact Mr. Olson’s business and other similar small businesses around the country,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
Murphy declined to comment on Olson’s situation because his office does not comment on casework for individual constituents.
In the meantime, Olson is still seeing a small number of customers who come in before their appointments and have not had photos rejected. He also takes photos for other countries’ passports. But he said Passport Pro might not last until 2022 if business does not soon pick up.
With obligations such as paying off a mortgage and the education of his son, who is a senior at Dickinson College, Olson said that Passport Pro’s demise would deal a “serious blow to my financial well-being.”
“Why does this pilot program have to be in Stamford?” Olson said. “Can’t they just move it somewhere else where it doesn’t have this impact?”
pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; twitter: @paulschott
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