If they don’t pay, don’t register the car

I received a note from the billings supervisor in the city of Roanoke, VA asking about the statistics on delinquent parking ticket rates across the country. I referred them to the IPI.

I also noted that if the city and the state governments could work in concert, this problem would basically go away. In some countries, Australia and the UK, I believe, you can’t register a vehicle if there is an outstanding unpaid ticket. So every year, people have to come up with their back fines and penalties or they can’t drive their cars.

It could work like this. The state would have a master database into which cities would put vehicles that had unpaid tickets. If a ticket was say 90 days old, they would go into the database. If the ticket was paid, they would be removed.

The state would then check the database when sending out renewal notices for vehicle registration. If the car was in the database, they would notify the owner that their renewal would not be processed unless a receipt from the city that the fines and penalties had been paid in full was received.

Obviously the state would need some funding to run the program, and that could come from the cities in the form of a percentage of the money collected. Or it could be on a per citation listed in the database. That cost in either case could be built into the penalties paid by the driver so the city would not be out any money.

I’m sure there are 100 reasons why this can’t or won’t work, but it seems to me that it’s a sensible approach that would cost nothing out of pocket.

JVH