Abuser fees abuse reason

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Abuser fees abuse reason				July 14. 2007

Just when you think you’ve digested that turkey of a transportation bill our legislature served up to Hampton Roads, out comes the Richmond waiter with another fishy dish that looks as though it’s been dredged up from the kepone crust at the bottom of the James River.

Indicative of yet another instance in which our benighted House of Delirates refused to face up to the need for a statewide hike in the gas tax to pay for transportation projects, their latest brain belch is being hawked under the rubric of “abuser fees.”

These fees are in addition to all the other fees (not taxes) that we on the outskirts of Hampton Roads will be paying under the recently approved transportation fiasco bill. The only difference is that the abuser fees are probably unconstitutional, since they apply only to Virginia drivers and hence run afoul of the 14th Amendment.

What apparently lies behind all this is the fact that your state legislature firmly believes that Virginians are reckless hooligans when they get behind the wheel. As a result, they’re a prime source for the moolah we need to put a few more lanes on Interstate 64 and build more bridges and tunnels to the Nirvana that is Norfolk. What they expect to get from us road-sassy stunt pilots is a cool $62 million.

Drivers from any other state are assumed to be infused with the ultimate in road courtesy and hence will be immune from the abuser fees if they’re caught doing 85 on Interstate 95.

Try doing that if you’re a Virginian, however, and you’ll be smacked with a fee of up to $1,050, payable over three years, for “aggressive driving.” In fact, if you’re caught doing 20 mph over any speed limit, following another car too closely or not driving on the right side of the road, your bank account will be whupped upside its balance for that same festive heap of drachmas.

So, if you’re thinking of whizzing along at 45 mph in one of our ubiquitous 25 mph speed traps or tailgating the guy on the cell phone going 15 mph, think again. Either that or slap a New York state license plate on your car and go to it.

The biggest abuser fee goes to the boozy blokes who tank up at a local watering hole and decide to drive home. If caught, they have to come up with a colossal $2,250. Unless they’re from Pennsylvania, and then they’re sent to their rooms and told to sober up before they weave their way back to Pittsburgh.

Other driving misdemeanors will cost you a mere $900, while driving with a suspended license constitutes only a minor abuse that will relieve you of $750.

While driving dangerously is nothing to kid about, the logic behind this whole notion of astronomical abuser fees for only Virginia drivers defies comprehension.

The line we’re being fed is that these fees will encourage abusive Virginians to be more careful drivers. And that’s fine. Yet it seems to run contrary to the intent of imposing such hefty fees, which is to fill up our transpo coffers.

On the one hand we want Virginians to be model drivers, while on the other we’re happy to see the shekels rolling in when they violate some driving law. If the hammerheads who proposed this legislation thought it through, the only logical conclusion they could come to would be that, in order for these fees to make a substantial contribution to the transportation fund, Virginians must continue to drive like loons and keep their checkbooks handy.

Nor do we seem to have considered what effect this scheme will have on local and state police. If the plan has merit and if the object is to inhale as much money as possible, it will be up to the police to make it work through stricter enforcement of the rules. This may well involve spending additional funds on the local and state levels to beef up police forces and get more police on the roads. It may also have a residual psychological effect on police personnel, who will now be considered one of the state’s primary fundraisers.

As for Virginia drivers, they’re rightfully incensed because the legislature not only is relying on their allegedly abusive driving to make ends meet, but also because thousands of tourists and other out-of-state pedal-to-the-metal drivers will be exempt from these bloated and onerous fees.

New Jersey, which also has astronomical abuser fees, forces out-of-state road ragers to pay up through garnisheed wages or by placing liens on their property. Why can’t we do the same?

There are all kinds of abuses for which fees should be levied. Perhaps the most unforgivable abuse is the abuse of reason. For too long the citizens of Virginia have watched their legislators come up with one agonizing bundle of legerdemain after another to avoid the only logical solution to our transportation woes: a statewide increase in the gas tax.

For all their contaminated concoctions, their frenzied contortions and their not-so-subtle subterfuges they should be subjected to the ultimate abuser fee. Come November, they may well be forced to pay up.