Lawmakers will likely look at legislation next year that could help Vermonters overcome driver’s license suspensions due to their inability to pay fines.
A task force headed by Secretary of Transportation Sue Minter is in the early stages of reviewing potential options for legislation that could help open channels for Vermonters to have their licenses restored.
The effort to look for statewide approaches to address suspended licenses comes six months after hundreds of Vermonters turned out in Burlington for a single day in March when they could pay off old tickets for $20 apiece.
Upward of 1,200 people from five counties showed up for the restoration day, Chauncey Liese of the Department of Motor Vehicles told the Vermont Child Poverty Council on Friday.
Some people showed up to pay off 30-year-old tickets, Liese said.
Many had other barriers to license restoration besides unpaid tickets. But, the amnesty day was a first step, Liese said. As of June, approximately half of the people who turned out in March had had their licenses reinstated, he told the panel.
Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan, who spearheaded the restoration day, told the panel Friday that license suspensions due to unpaid fines are just one part of a very complex system that keeps people from getting behind the wheel legally.
“The biggest obstacle that I saw within the system, too, was an inability of folks to navigate the system,” Donovan said. “It’s really hard.”
While at the courthouse to pay their fines, people could also check up on what other steps they would need to take to complete restoration. For some people that could be related to car insurance, or taking a class for drunken driving charges.
Now, a task force is looking at ways to carry the driver restoration day forward and expand the effort to the rest of the state.
The success of the amnesty day has prompted discussion of further efforts the state could take to tackle the problems of license suspensions on a statewide level.
One measure could be to limit the types of offenses that contribute to license suspension, so that a license could only be suspended in response to driving-related offenses. Currently, a ticket for purchasing tobacco underage could turn out to be a barrier to getting a license, Donovan told the committee Friday.
Another approach would be to eliminate the $71 license reinstatement fee, which people have to pay on top of the fines for their tickets.
“This is bad debt,” Donovan said Friday. “It is bad debt, so let’s just clear the docket and give them a fresh start.”
Liese said that there has been some discussion about holding a similar amnesty day in the southern part of the state, although he did not know any specifics.
Liese said Tuesday that the task force is still in the early stages of drafting potential legislation, and specifics are still far on the horizon. They are considering a number of different approaches, he said.
A separate initiative, Liese said, would involve legislation to dismiss all tickets from before 1991.
Under the current system, a state’s attorney would need to go through all those tickets individually to dismiss them — a process that is both time consuming and laden with paperwork, Liese said. Legislative action could clear the way to do that all at once, he said.
Christopher Curtis of Vermont Legal Aid, and a member of the task force, said traffic tickets can become very significant barriers to transportation for low-income Vermonters.
“That just starts a spiral, a cascading effect that really puts people in a hole from which it is very difficult to emerge,” Curtis said Tuesday.
Finding reliable transportation is difficult for many Vermonters, Curtis said. If a ticket with a fine of a few hundred dollars is beyond an individual’s budget, Curtis said, that person may not be able to get to work.
Though the task force is still in the early phases of pulling together any legislative approach resolving suspension due to unpaid fines, “This is a way to get people back on track,” Curtis said.
