OPINION:
Hip, hip, hooray!
D.C. officials want to give folks who get parking and red-light tickets a break.
Well, some folks.
And, well, a measure of a financial break.
Oh, and it’s a sham, too.
So, a celebration is not in order.
The facts first: The D.C. Council is considering legislation that would exempt residents from fines on certain traffic tickets, such as those that double in parking tickets, speeding tickets and red-light running tickets. (A breather for sure.)
The legislation, titled the Traffic and Parking Ticket Penalty Amendment Act of 2017, means that if a, say, $300 speeding ticket isn’t paid within the 30-day grace period and is paid, say, 10 days late, the ticket would not double to $600.
Introduced by freshman Council member Trayon White, bill 22-0204 also would not exempt commuters in neighboring Maryland and Virginia, nor residents of other states who motor into the nation’s capital for work. Tourists who drive themselves or rent cars would not be exempt either.
For sure, the rollback in ticket fines is a poke in eye to Maryland and Virginia in the name of a commuter tax.
Understand, the city is not permitted to levy a commuter tax for tending to other states’ residents who tend to their jobs in the city. Indeed, the genesis of the District’s convoluted anti-parking apparatus was designed in the 1970s to sock it to commuters anyway. The so-called residential parking permit, which residents who own vehicles have to pay annually to park on their own block, is a perfect example of the parking Nazis’ policy reasoning.
That’s why it’s so daggum interesting that one of the explanations for the exemption is that poor people cannot afford it.
“The average person in D.C., especially in Wards 7, 8 and 5 and parts of [Ward] 4 don’t have extra money to give to the government.”
Well, neither does the ordinary working schmo who’s living on minimum wages or a fixed income, or a college student who lives on $1 cups of caffeine from Mickey D’s and Ramen noodles from Family Dollar.
What’s more, D.C. Council members decades ago exempted themselves from parking tickets. (There are extreme circumstances, such as a council member growling at Fido over a fire hydrant.)
And here’s another rub: The real scam is that how in the Dickens going to exempt a driver from the doubling of a red-light, parking or speeding ticket when the vehicle — not the driver — is the offender?
Is the city going to ask that we plaster our driver’s license and insurance cards on our rear windshields so cameras can snap them, too?
The sanctuary from the city’s anti-driving Nazis should be given to the D.C.-registered vehicle and the D.C.-licensed motorist.
When and if city officials can get with that program, an update will be in order.
Until then, this, too, is worth repeating: Nobody has “extra money” to give to the D.C. government.
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