Balancing Budgets on Drivers' Backs

[AntZ]

Balancing Budgets on Drivers' Backs

By William Lajeunesse

Published April 19, 2011 | FoxNews.com





Cities and states across the country are broke. But instead of raising taxes, lawmakers are raising traffic fines.

"This business of using fines and traffic fees as revenue sources is just flat wrong," said Lew Uhler with the National Tax Limitation Committee. "This is simply a tax by another name."

Nowhere is that more obvious than Los Angeles, where the city collects more then $1.8 million a year at a single intersection in the San Fernando Valley from drivers running a red light. Cost per ticket is $476.

"It's almost $500 and I have three kids right now," said Jesus Altamirano, standing outside a Los Angeles municipal courtroom where he is fighting a red light violation. "It's just hard the way they want to get you with these tickets."

But it's not just California. In a memo obtained by the Boston Herald, local police chief Ken Coye instructs his officers in the suburb of Malden to write at least one traffic or parking ticket per shift.

"We need to increase enforcement in areas that create revenue," says the Coye memo. "Write ‘ONE TAG A DAY.’"

Lawmakers around the country seem to listening.

* Parking in a fire lane in Pensacola, Fla., will cost you $100, up from $10.

* Georgia recently added a $200 surcharge for anyone driving more than 85 miles per hour.

* Colorado increased fines for speeding from $50 to $135.

* Portland, Ore., increased fines for parking in a handicapped spot from $190 to $450.

* Parking fines in Boston doubled to $40.

* Speeding in Florida just 10 miles over the legal limit will cost you $196, up from $154.

"We cannot afford to pay tickets, especially when we don't feel guilty for what we are being fined for," said Luis Rivera, a California contractor. Rivera was slapped with a $276 fine for not closing the tailgate on his pickup truck.

California's State Senate President Darrell Steinberg admitted lawmakers raised traffic fines to raise revenue - not for traffic safety or to change driver behavior. It's "one of the patches that we've relied on to avoid deeper cuts" to state programs, he said.

But closing a $28 billion dollar deficit isn't easy. Consider these Golden State fines:

* Driving one to 15 miles over speed limit is $215. Compare that to $50 in Idaho and Washington State.

* Run a stop sign: $236

* No seat belt: $148. In Louisiana, the same infraction is $25.

* Broken headlight: $100

* Park in a disabled spot: $1,043. A second offense is $2,000.

* Pass a school bus with flashing red lights in San Francisco: $754

"We ought not go to bankruptcy court as a result of simple infractions of driving laws," complained Uhler, who believes collections go down when fines get too high because motorists simply can't pay or refuse to because "punishment doesn't fit the crime."

Petros Abraham agrees. He got cited at 2 a.m. one night for making a right hand turn at a red light when he failed to stop for the required 3 seconds.

"I don't think it is fair," said Abraham. "They're just dumping all of their problems back onto the people, back onto the taxpayer."

[Deepsepia]

This is an interesting one.

There are two separate issues-- general motor vehicle fees, stuff like registration, and then traffic fines.

Generally speaking it seems reasonable to make drivers pay for roads, highways, emergency services and so on with fees . . . there's no reason that the State ought to subsidize roads out of general tax revenues.

But exorbitant fines is another matter. There are some massive fines out there that are unconnected with any legitimate punitive function, and in fact set a very dangerous incentive to mark things poorly and make traffic less safe.

At the intersection cited in the article, where Los Angeles is collecting $1.8 million a year in fines for folks running red lights, there's a terrible incentive-- normally, when you have a problem like that, traffic engineers might do stuff to make folks stop. But in this case, the city has no incentive to do that.

And there's a terrible double-hit to drivers. Now you have cops with a huge incentive to write a lot of traffic tickets, which will not only hit drivers for the ticket, but also in increased insurance rates.

All in all, its a very bad way to raise revenue.

Here are some California tickets, 2011 -- very steep by my lights

VC 22500 Parking in a bus loading area. $976

VC 22507(A) Violation of disabled parking provisions, first offense. $976
VC 22507(B) Violation of disabled parking provisions, second offense. $1,876

VC 27400 Headsets or Earplugs covering both ears. $178

VC 34506 Commercial Driver - Log book violation. $616

VC 22349 Unsafe speed, 1 to 15 miles over the limit. $214

[Southern Belle]

It's essentially a tax burden for drivers and it's unfair. If we raise enough hell with our state legislatures, it can be stopped. At least here in SC it can.

I think a better way to replace lost revenue is to tax companies who outsource their labor to foreign countries because it's cheaper. They need to pay for the tax that is lost by not employing American taxpayers and the further burden that unemployment puts on our system.

[FBD]

I'll betcha these are the same types of people who bitched about price gouging of gas when katrina hit, making a complete moral equivalence saying "they did it, so that makes it okay for us to do this relatively equivalent (from a certain point of view, sorta like Vader killing Anakin) shenanigan here"...

This is nothing more than price gouging - or, Tax gouging. Are these fine increases in response to some increase in offenses? That would be an acceptable usage in response to a real world issue - if speeding only costs you $40, that's far less of a deterrent than >85mph carrying an extra penalty of a few hund.

Making up for governmental abuses of respective Treasuries by doubling, tripling, fines on offenses is just ridiculous - c'mon - a thousand dollars for parking in a handicapped spot??? That's just preposterous...but for those who believe the government has every right to force people to act exactly how they tell them to...its probably no big deal :roll: