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A few months back my wife received one of those annoying letters in the mail stating she had run a stop light (she missed the cut off by a fraction of a second). She received a photo and a stunning bill for $500. She made the mistake of acknowledging the citation; apparently just ignoring it helps to defeat these electronic tickets. Then she said to me, “How do working-class people afford these things.” We now know they don’t – they don’t pay them and Governor Brown has a plan to rid them of the burden and stick it to the Middle Class.

Brown made headlines by calling the California court system a “hellhole of desperation” for the poor. Brown then proposed an amnesty program which would restructure the program so that “drivers with lesser infractions would pay half of what they owe, and administrative fees would be slashed from $300 to $50.” These outsized fines for traffic tickets have resulted in 4.8 million people having their licenses suspended since 2006.

This is all well and good since California’s employees have started a war with the residents of the state to collect more revenues, thereby maintaining their jobs and their immense benefits programs, which has thrown municipalities and the state into deep debt. Along with asset-seizure programs, one of the ways cities have increased their revenues is through raising the cost of parking and moving violation tickets. Fines for these minor infractions have escalated three-to-four times as cities look for easy ways to raise revenues without raising taxes. It is another reason people gladly move out of the state.

I applaud the Governor for making a move on this along with State Senator Bob Hertzberg (D – Van Nuys) for submitting his bill (SB 405) to begin straightening out this devious mess. The bill would begin to relieve what they classify as the poor of the state from these heinous charges which have caused many to lose their licenses for their inability to pay. I am sure that many resort to driving without a license which only compounds their anguish and legal problems.

But these traffic fines, which are more about raising revenue than actually punishing someone properly for a minor infraction, need to be restructured for everyone. Proof that these fines are all about revenue raising is that previously you could go to traffic school and have the ticket taken off your record without paying the fine. Now if you go to traffic school the ticket is deleted from your record, but you still must pay the fine.

Where does that leave the rest of us who have paid these fines? (For the record, I have not had a moving violation in close to 20 years.) Sunk and poorer. If you struggled to make the payment because you did not want to risk having your license revoked, you have no recourse. If you have the good fortune of being of more prodigious means and begrudgingly forked over these obnoxious fees – tough luck. You are now being pronounced a lesser resident of the state.

Now that the state leadership has boldly moved to stop this disgrace, I contacted Senator Hertzberg’s office to get a copy of what they are proposing plus find out what they are doing for the rest of us. When I broached the subject with his spokesperson, she stated they are looking at the fine structure. Well, if you are a proposing a bill to remedy the past for people with a “hardship,” why can you not include stripping these fines down to a reasonable level as part of this bill? She replied that “They are looking at the situation.” Translation: nothing is being done soon. If you are not ‘the poor,’ you are stuck with this legalized theft of your money which is called an infraction, but now classified as a major crime by the financial fine.

What we will now have is a class system in California. If you are financially successful you will puke when you have to write a check for a traffic ticket, but your life will not be materially altered. If you are middle-class or working-class people and law-abiding residents of the state, you will cough up the money to protect your good name from even further costs and exposure, but there goes your vacation or some essentials in your budget. If you are ‘poor” and cannot possibly even begin to tackle these ridiculous fines, you don’t have to pay.

The amazing thing is that Brown and Hertzberg don’t even see that they are once again slapping the middle-class and working-class people of this state in the face. SB 405 can fix this entire matter and bring back equal justice for all. But they don’t seem to think that is a priority.

And they wonder why the middle-class is leaving California for other states.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015 at 8:10 am and is filed under Blog Posts.