“Our DLS system is broken,” Jewett said on the House floor Tuesday. “I mean like really badly broken.”
The bill, Jewett said, is “an attempt to fix that broken system.”
The House approved H.571 on a voice vote Tuesday. The bill tries to make it easier for drivers to get back on the road after their licenses are suspended for failure to pay fines, while increasing the penalties for certain behind-the-wheel offenses.
Some 59,000 Vermonters have a suspended license, according to a task force formed around the issue of DLS in 2015, with more than half of those due to unpaid fines.
An unpaid traffic ticket, which leads to suspension, can snowball into a substantial mountain of other tickets and offenses — a financial burden some say is beyond the reaches of many Vermonters on limited incomes.
The House Judiciary Committee finalized its version of the bill late last month.
The bill aims to curb the snowballing of suspensions through a program that allows for payment of tickets in $30 monthly increments. The program already exists, but the bill aims to raise awareness of it.
“We need to recognize that some people simply can’t pay that penalty in one lump sum,” Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River, said while reporting the bill on the floor.
At the same time, the bill aims to make license suspension more dependent on dangerous driving behavior by upping the points that go on someone’s license for certain offenses. Drivers who get 10 points on their license go under suspension.
For instance, under the bill, using a cellphone while in a school or construction zone would garner a penalty of five points, up from two in current law.
The bill also seeks to even the playing field for people who have suspensions from old tickets. It dismisses all outstanding tickets from before July 1, 1990. Many of the records of those tickets are unreadable now because of fire and water damage.
If the legislation passes, the state will hold a three-month driver restoration program from September through November of this year, during which time people across Vermont with outstanding tickets from before Jan. 1, 2015, will be able to pay off tickets for a fee of $30. Tickets issued after that date will be eligible based on the individual’s ability to pay.
Some legislators raised concerns about the fiscal impact of changing the program, and that the cost would be shifted to law-abiding drivers or to people who do pay tickets right away.
Komline was the sole vote against the bill when it passed through the House Ways and Means Committee.
“This is a cost shift,” Komline said, adding that it shifts the burden to people who are paying their bills.
She pointed to the difficult budgetary situation the state is already facing for the next fiscal year. She also referenced a comment Jewett made on the floor that the long-term impact of the reforms in the bill are not yet clear.
“So we don’t know if this is going to work, but it’s going to cost us $800,000 in a year we don’t have money,” Komline said.
Estimates put together by the nonpartisan legislative Joint Fiscal Office suggest the program would cost the state roughly $840,870 in fiscal year 2017. That includes losses to the transportation fund and the judiciary, and the costs of implementing the restoration program and recording the dismissal of pre-1990 tickets.
The estimated cost decreases to $765,870 in fiscal 2018.
Rep. Janet Ancel, D-Calais, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, said the state does not count fines as revenue. “It’s not actually the way states ought to be raising money,” Ancel said.
The bill will be up for a final vote on the House floor Wednesday, before moving to the Senate.
House Speaker Shap Smith hailed the bill’s passage Tuesday in a statement after the vote.
“This important policy strikes a balance between legitimate suspensions and old, archaic laws that no longer serve public safety,” Smith said.
