WEST PALM BEACH — Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon got an earful from County Commissioner Burt Aaronson Tuesday when she told the commission her office was struggling to speed through lines of people waiting for driver’s license services.

In 16 years on the commission, Aaronson said he’s never heard as many complaints about a tax collector.

“We’re taking the brunt of a lot of the things going wrong in your office,” Aaronson said.

She proposed to train county workers to answer simple questions about drivers licenses; he said that would be “indoctrination.”

Then he read aloud a letter from a disgruntled citizen and quizzed Gannon on the mechanics of how people line up in her Delray Beach office.

Gannon, who is elected and doesn’t report to the commission, responded by inviting Aaronson several times to come to Delray and see for himself. Aaronson dodged the offer.

In recent months rumors have swirled that the term-limited Aaronson may seek Gannon’s job next.

The tussle between a gun shop-owning senator and the former president of the National Rifle Association is heating up over a controversial driver license handbook.

And the prospect looks bleaker every day for the vendor who prints the driver license handbook for free in return for the exclusive ability to advertise his “National Safety Commission” driver education courses.

First, Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles chief Julie Jones canceled Ken Underwood’s controversial contract with the state effective at the end of the year.

Then an effort by a seemingly unwitting Sen. Carey Baker that would have given Underwood a leg up on a new contract went nowhere after a senate committee balked at the proposal, saying it appeared to be aimed at rescuing the sole source vendor.

Enter ultra-powerful NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer.

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Sen. Carey Baker’s effort to rescue the vendor who has printed the state’s driver license handbook for five years went nowhere today and seems to be destined for the cutting room floor.

Baker had originally proposed a bill (SB 2342) that would keep Ken Underwood in the running for a contract with the Department of Motor Vehicles and Highway Safety which he now prints for free in exchange for advertising his National Safety Commission driver’s ed schools.

Baker, R-Eustis, rewrote the bill to appease opponents, including Underwood’s competitors, but he asked the Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee to skip a vote on it today, as he did last week, because it was clear the revisions didn’t pass critics’ muster.

DHSMV chief Julie Jones, who canceled the contract after the end of the year, told the committee that “We need to overcome the perception of an endorsement of one company.”

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NRA lobbyist and political heavyweight Marion Hammer’s targeting a bill that ostensibly has nothing to do with weapons except that the bill’s Senate sponsor Carey Baker owns a gun shop.

A controversy over the state’s drivers license handbook has the former president of the National Rifle Association loaded for bear.

Baker, R-Eustis, is backing a bill (SB 2342) that would force the state to extend a contentious agreement with Ken Underwood, the Ponte Vedra Beach owner of a driver ed school, in which he prints the drivers license handbook for the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles for free.

In return, Underwood gets to advertise his businesses in the handbook.

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