Today's Episode of WTF Is Wrong W/ Virginia
I’m beginning to wonder how much longer I can claim to live in VA due to its greater respect for individual liberty over the relatively less free Maryland. It’s not enough that we have a governor who’s horrified that private citizens can have more than a box of ammo without registering with the state. It’s not enough that our feckless General Assembly passes tax hike after tax hike despite an enormous $2 billion budget surplus. It’s not even enough that my own town of Herndon establishes a haven for illegal day laborers. Now we have these goddamn ‘abuser fees’, which are both bad policy and a study in microcosm of just how fucking clueless our political class is.
I’m ashamed to say that my very own Delegate, Tom Rust(R-Herndon) takes some measure of the credit for this latest revenue redistribution scheme. But I digress.
You must understand that here in NoVA, land of shit traffic and do-nothing pols, transportation is a huge issue. In fact, you would almost do better to defend your latest nanny-state power-grab with “It’s for the transportation” than the more conventional “for the children”. Given that background, just imagine the thought process in those teeny little politician brains…
“Every day millions of people spend hours on Virginia roadways stuck in traffic cursing the government for shit infrastructure. Just imagine how many votes I could get if they think I’m doing something about it!
“Of course, like any problem calling out for a government solution, more money is needed. We can’t take it from our bloated education coffers, because no one takes money from the ed budget and lives to tell about it. We can’t raise taxes, because we already raised taxes twice and voters don’t seem to like it. We can’t issue bonds without a referendum, and that takes too long and diffuses the credit. What to do? Why not…raise traffic fines!
“Brilliant! Everybody hates speeders and aggressive drivers, and they’re using the roads so they should have to pay more. Speeding: $1000. Following too closely: $1500. Driving in an HOV lane illegally: death (and $2000).
“What’s that? Are you fucking kidding me!? The VA Constitution requires traffic fines go to the Literary Fund!? SHIT! Can’t we amend the constitution? No, that’ll take too long.
“I know! We won’t raise the traffic fines. We’ll add fees on top of the fines! The Constitution doesn’t say anything about fees! We’ll call them…’Abuser Fees’. They’ll be thousands of dollars, and we can use the money for whatever the fuck we want to. Brilliant.
“Of course, we’ve no way to collect ‘fees’ from out-of-state drivers, but that’s ok. Hell, most traffic violations in VA are committed by VA residents, so we’re not leaving that much money on the table anyway.
“Man, this is a great idea. We’re fixing transporation, and without raising taxes. Voters are gonna love this.”
And the rest, as they say, is history. Our House of Delegates, Senate, and Governor are all sufficiently clueless and/or stupid as to believe that this sort of scheme 1) makes sense, 2) helps fix the gridlock problem, and 3) won’t result in anger and ridicule from all quarters.
The problems with this are manifold. The greatest in my mind is that it’s undermining the clear intent of the VA Constitution, which reads:
The General Assembly shall set apart as a permanent and perpetual school fund the present Literary Fund; the proceeds of…all fines collected for offenses committed against the Commonwealth…
Now, I find it hard to believe that the authors of this section intended for a future General Assembly to call a ‘fine’ a ‘fee’ and thereby escape this constitutional requirement. Perhaps we can torture prisoners, call it ‘rehabilitation’, and escape the ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ proscription in the US constitution? Maybe we can call a ‘search’ a ‘safety review’, so our police can enter any home and search any person at will? I think not.
The second problem I see with this policy is that it’s an insult to the voters’ intelligence. “Don’t worry”, we’re assured, “it’s not a tax increase. We know how much you hate those. It just means that some people will have to give the government alot of money if they want to avoid going to jail.” But it’s not a tax!
Third, it appears no one has considered what will actually happen when this hair-brained scheme is implemented. I imagine that, to the extent the politicians who voted for this thought about it at all, they imagined a rich white yuppy fuck in a shiny new beemer, made to pay his debt to society to help reduce traffic for the rest of us.
Of course, as with any government revenue redistribution scheme, it won’t work out that way in reality. What happens when a poor single mother gets pulled over for ‘aggressive driving’ on her way to work, and gets slammed with a $2k ‘fee’? When she can’t pay it, her license will be suspended. She’ll still drive, of course, else her family won’t eat. What happens when she gets pulled over with a suspended license? Jail time? How much credit will ol’ Tommy Rust take when that happens?
Which leads me to the fourth problem I see w/ this scheme. The ‘abuser fees’ are assessed to those guilty of ‘reckless driving’. Sounds fair enough; people abusing the roads with reckless driving. Only it’s not what you think. From an letter I received from Del. Rust defensing his scheme, here are some of the things that can land you a huge fee:
- Criminal traffic offenses (yes, there is such a thing), like:
- driving while intoxicated (bad)
- vehicular manslaughter (also bad)
- eluding the police (not recommended)
- passing a stopped school bus (uhh…kind of a dick move, but ‘criminal’!?)
- ‘Reckless’ driving offenses:
- traveling 20mph or more over the posted speed limit (you, asshole, doing 75mph on the toll road, bend over!)
- street racing (uhh…)
- passing a school bus that is loading or unloading students (this one again)
- failure to use a turn signal (seriously!?)
Stupidity of ‘abuser fees’ aside, I think we can all agree that vehicular manslaughter is not a socially productive activity, and ought to be discouraged. However, note that it’s on the same list of Bad Things as traveling 20MPH over the speed limit (sounds bad, but here in VA major arteries are posted 55MPH, and going 20MPH over that is quite common), and ‘failure to use a turn signal’.
Not to fear, though. Rust assures us
This violation is not usually ticketed as reckless unless you also commit another offense or are involved in an accident. Although I make it a habit to use my turn signal, I will not worry that a police officer is waiting to give me a reckless driving citation if I simply forget to make a lane change without it.
I swear, that’s a direct quote from his email. We shouldn’t be bothered that the Commonwealth of Virginia, under his law, will soak us for thousands of dollars for failure to use a turn signal, because he doesn’t think a police officer would charge that offense!? Coz cops never do things like that.
Finally, the fees are unfair. I mean, manifestly unfair. If a Marylander or a New Yorker or a Californian commits any of the above infractions, they pay no ‘fees’. When asked about this, Rust provides the following:
Out-of-state residents are unfortunately not subject to the abuser fee, because of an unavoidable constitutional conflict. I want to be able to make out-of-state residents subject to these same fees, and I have not given up on finding a creative way to do it.
Not surprisingly, his fix is to find a ‘creative’ (read: extra-constitutional) way to grab that additional revenue as well. In the mean time, the Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution apparently doesn’t apply here.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is WTF is wrong with Virginia. Our politicians are shallow, feckless, vain, and fuckwitted. What’s worse, they seem to be operating under the assumption that their shit doesn’t stink, tragically ignorant of their own absurdity. It would be amusing if they weren’t in charge.
The General Assembly has been in need of a Purge for quite some time; maybe this embarrassing incident will help it along.