One of the most egregious provisions of the Transportation Compromise bill (AKA Bill Howell’s Tax Increase), is the provision calling for fines and penalties on abusive drivers. The thinking has been that abusive drivers cause accidents, which cause delays and thereby contribute to the transportation gridlock.
Two House Delegates from Northern Virginia, Dave Albo (R-Fairfax) and Tom Rust (R-Herndon) have been on a single-minded pursuit of enacting super penalties on abusive drivers that can be used to fund transportation. For three years now, they have been reintroducing similar versions of a bill that will raise traffic fines and penalize repeat traffic violators with additional penalties–bills that been plagued with constitutional and legal questions. (For example see “Taxing Drivers” or “Why Not A Ticket for Tax Abuse.”)
Albo and Rust started out proposing that anyone with four points on their driver’s license be required to pay up to $700 a year in additional penalties. Getting four points nowadays is easy; you can be an example driver and all it takes is one moving violation to get enough points classifying you an “abusive driver” under the Albo/Rust definition.
Based on the outcry generated about the bill’s retroactive provisions (penalties applied retroactively are illegal both under the U.S. and Virginia constitution) they had to relent and increase the outstanding points from four to eight. Furthermore, before existing points would be counted, one needed to get one additional citation after July 1, 2007.
What is missed in the discussion over the definition of “traffic abusers” or “abusive drivers” is the fact that another section of the same bill calls for levying unheard of penalties for even one minor traffic violation. For example, if a driver with a perfect record gets a moving citation he or she will face fines and penalties well exceeding $1,000–regardless of their prior driving record. The only break they get is that they’ll pay the additional penalties called for in this bill over a three year period.
In other words, you can have a perfect driving record over let’s say 20 years, but you’re still going to get saddled paying fines and penalties exceeding $1,000 for a minor moving violation–all in the name of solving our transportation gridlock. Needless to say, these sort of penalties are regressive and will have a severe impact on low and moderate income families (many of whom are minorities). How can the GOP claim that it is cares about low and moderate income families and minorities when it passes this type of legislation?
These sort of bills bolster the Democrat argument that the GOP is the party of the rich and doesn’t care about the poor or working middle-class families.
More next on equal protection–our fundamental legal principle that we’re all equal under the law…