According to this article, some members of the General Assembly are having second thoughts about the Civil Remedial Fees that were imposed as a part of the transportation package.
They were supposed to be assessed only for the most serious traffic offenses, such as drunken driving. However, because of what lawmakers are calling a mistake, the fees also can be levied for less serious offenses like driving too fast for road conditions.
You know, perhaps if the legislature had more time to actually read stuff before voting on it, such “mistakes” wouldn’t happen.
House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said some minor changes are needed in new rules, but he considers a wholesale rewrite of the law unnecessary.
[…]
Griffith said he is surprised at the level of opposition to the new law.
Surprised – or did they just not think this through?
For example, Griffith said the new fees are required for anyone convicted of eluding police, including a lone female motorist who drives at a legal speed to a public area instead of stopping immediately for a police officer because she fears for her safety.
I hadn’t thought of that one but now that you mention it, it shows just how poorly thought out these fees were.
In any event, I’m glad to see that the legislators are responding to citizens. Now we just have to hold their feet to the fire when the session starts next year.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
It seems to me like ultimately the failure of the GA to think this through lies in forgetting that traffic laws are supposed to be about promoting public safety on our roads. You can see it in the language of the amendment’s authors, Albo and Rust – in the first article to quote him on the issue, Albo described it as “a completely voluntary tax.” While I suspect a lot of people still disagree with his stand on the fees, it is to Governor Kaine’s credit that he only speaks about the issue in terms of creating safer roads.
IF VA wants to go the route of higher fees AND use this to help stop traffic offenses…then they should base the fees on income and ability to pay…Therefore for someone on minimum wage the fees should be less than what they currently are…but the infractions will still hurt and help the individual drive more carefully (i.e. legally)….for someone wealthy the current fines do nothing to prevent speeding, etc…..
Just my 2 cents….but shouldn’t justice be fair? It would be nice if our entire justice system fines, sentences, etc were reviewed and revamped…For example, too many folks are going to prison on first offenses for non violent crimes….wouldn’t restitution to the victim(s), fines, and public service be a better sentence for a first offense of a nonviolent infraction?
Buzz…Buzz…
That’s an interesting interpretation and I understand why someone might hold it. It’s a mode of progressive penalty assessment, just like our progressive tax assessment structure applies a tax rate based on how much one can afford to pay.
I disagree with the idea, however, because I don’t think justice is about fairness, but about equality. “Equal Justice Under Law” is what’s engraved above the steps to the Supreme Court. It seems to me that an equal punishment should be meted out for every violation, regardless of the socio-economic status of the defendant. I would never agree, for instance, that an old man who commits murder should spend less time in prison than a young man who commits the same crime because he has fewer years left to spend on earth, which is the same sort of logic one applies when arguing that fines and punishments should be scaled to fit the defendant and not the crime itself.
Justice is about cause and effect, action and consequence, cause and punishment. It must remain blind and disinterested, I think, in the socio-economic background and demographics of the defendant (white people and black people should be assessed the same punishment for the same crime), it should remain disinterested in the same information about the victim (you shouldn’t get a lighter sentence for stabbing a black man than you would for stabbing a white woman), and contrary to Dels. Albo and Rust think, it should also remain disinterested in the financial needs of the state.
First: anonymous is right about the silly idea of proportional fines based on income. Proportional fines are primarily supported by socialist losers who are jealous of those who earn more than they do.
Second, according the RTD (and its newly lame site) Gov. Kaine is responsible for the CRF’s. I don’t know if Vivian has enabled html, so I’ll just post the url:
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-07-17-0129.html
Please pardon the length – I sure don’t admin that site.
Well, looks like html work just fine. My apologies for doubting you, Vivian.
The easiest thing to do with a long url is to use a sniping service 😉 And you can always hide a long url in a link like this.
As for the fees, yes, I’m aware that Kaine pulled the out-of-state stuff out. Obviously, that just adds insult to injury but at least Kaine had a reason for doing so: how to impose the fees on them. The fees themselves are a problem, and that is what the general assembly needs to take up.