Traffic Tickets Bell Doesn’t Toll For Gov’t. Workers

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Tuesday, November 16. 2010

Traffic Tickets Bell Doesn’t Toll For Gov’t. Workers

California’s government workers are protected from paying traffic violations the rest of Californians pay.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that California privacy law allows its 1.5-million government workers and some of their families to keep their home address private. A result: They “zip along toll roads and past red-light cameras with almost no worries about being caught because collection agencies have no address to send citations.”

The San Diego Democrat in charge of the state Appropriation Committee blocked legislation to close the loophole, failing to weigh the toll and fine collections against the estimated $3-million to use government employees’ agency address to collect.

The newly elected state legislature is facing a budget deficit of over $25-billion, and growing. First on its list of measures should be closing this loophole. Right?

Posted by Bruce Kesler at 10:01 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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We could juxtapose this story with this story about Giverment employees owing billions in back taxes:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40215318

Hey kids! Don't try this at home!

#1 mudbug on 2010-11-16 11:53 (Reply)

Closing this loophole should, in my opinion, have nothing to do with the budget deficit as traffic fines should be about safety rather than revenue generation. This should be only about equal justice under the law.

#2 Michael R. Kesti on 2010-11-16 12:50 (Reply)

Michael,

You racist! We all know that "equal justice under the law" is just code for get the people!!! You guys are all alike!

#2.1 mudbug on 2010-11-16 13:24 (Reply)

I hope that the state fails further as the clueless citizenry elected Governor Moonbeam as their leader. This guy was in office when I was a kid, and the state was a mess when he finally left then. Suffer, and suffer greatly citizens. You deserve no empathy, and loss of revenue like this article talks about is a drop in the bucket of what this mess of a state has.

#3 Joe Luke on 2010-11-16 20:12 (Reply)

I'm divided. I think the agency doing fines should be able to get addresses. On the other hand, I'm not so sure that Govt employees should have readily accessible addresses and such - retribution and harassment are a problem for any public employee. Anyone who has to deal with the general public gets targeted. Even at the local ski area, the employees are name tagged only as - "Marsha, Vermont" - because of the rather scary and difficult problem of patrons looking them up on the internet and showing up at their homes.

Agreed that everyone should pay the fines, though.

#4 curmudgeon on 2010-11-16 21:33 (Reply)

" retribution and harassment are a problem for any public employee."

if you can't trust a government agency to keep secret the addresses of people in its database, you can't trust the government.

oh wait...

But seriously, why should government workers be above the law in any way?
Why should any punk be able to go to DMV to get my address so he can wait for me when I get home and beat me up, but can't do the same for some flunky in the social security office?

#4.1 J.T. Wenting on 2010-11-16 23:48 (Reply)

I think those things make great targets.

#5 NJSoldier on 2010-11-16 22:45 (Reply)

As we say in Silicon Valley, this is a feature, not a bug.

Our whole system of roadway express lanes, carpool lanes, and toll lanes is just a scheme to allow special privileges at the expense of the hoi polloi.

This morning San Francisco is proposing a $6 toll for entering the City during commute hours via land roads. the bridges to the North and East already have tolls in excess of maintenance costs, bonds, etc with the moneys collected going to other politically determined purposes.

Now a $6 cover charge is not too bad - it's the two drink minimum that kills you.

#6 Whitehall on 2010-11-17 14:59 (Reply)

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Tuesday, November 16. 2010

Traffic Tickets Bell Doesn’t Toll For Gov’t. Workers