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IOWA JUSTICE - AHEAD OF THE CURVE!

February 16, 2004

Economics weblogs "Marginal Revolution" and "Truck and Barter" have been discussing scaling speeding fines to income. Under such a system, a rich speeder pays a higher fine - perhaps because the rich scofflaws won't be deterred otherwise.

Iowa's counties are way ahead of them. According to a series of stories in The Des Moines Register, taxpayers willing to pay more can get their speeding tickets transmogrified into broken taillights, bad mufflers, and so on as needed - at a price - when a speeding ticket might cost the driver his license, or his job.

"Last year, [Cass County Attorney] Barry issued 148 defective-equipment citations that replaced 54 tickets written by police for offenses such as speeding and reckless driving. Those 148 tickets carried fines and fees of roughly $150 each - more than three times the typical penalty for equipment violations - and generated more than $21,000 for the state."

If you are going fast enough, you can plead guilty to equipment violations of a scope that would appear to make speeding impossible, because the car would fall apart:

"To get the tickets dismissed, Sniader sent Barry a sworn statement in which he stated that his car was riddled with broken equipment:

"'The Chevy Monte Carlo that I was driving at that time had a defective muffler, defective windshield wiper, defective tail light, defective back-up lamps, defective horn, defective windshield, defective signal lamps, defective mirrors and defective safety belt.'"

This system is not a pure "ability-to-pay" system, of course - nothing keeps somebody without prior violations from paying the standard $43 fine. It's almost market-based, in a quaintly extortionate way - you can pay more to keep the moving violation off your record if you really need to:

"At the time, Denney had three speeding convictions on his record - all from within the previous 10 months. Under Iowa law, a fourth ticket for failure to yield could have been a serious threat to his driving privileges.

"But Denney hired a lawyer to negotiate a deal, and Cass County Attorney James Barry eventually agreed to convert the ticket to citations for defective brakes and tires, each of which generated $155 in revenue for the county. As part of the deal, Denney agreed to pay for the damages to Johnson's truck, later estimated to be $9,000."

Perhaps this is an argument against consolidating our counties. If we had only 15 or 20 counties, instead of 99, would there be room for such creative ideas? Now the legislature can build on this creativity to solve the Iowa's budget problems. For example, in addition to enhanced alternative fines, Iowa maybe could issue admission coupons to our state's fine gaming facilities to pay for the casino's impending tax refunds by generating additional gambling tax revenue. Iowa, lead the way!

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