Friday, May 24, 2019

Abolition of driver surcharges a rare #cjreform upside for 2019 #txlege

In a Texas legislative session where scarce little justice-reform legislation of any stripe made it through the process, the abolition of the hated Driver-Responsibility surcharge will be remembered as the signature accomplishment. The bill getting rid of the program has finally passed and HB 2048 is headed to the governor.

From advocates' perspective, there wasn't a ton left to do. In 2017, a proposal to replace trauma-center funding generated by the surcharges with a nearly identical system of new "fines" died in the Senate. At the time, advocates promoted a number of much more reasonable funding solutions, and once it became clear that the most-regressive-possible surcharge repeal did not have a path, legislative leaders resigned themselves to looking at those suggestions.

With Senate Finance Chair Jane Nelson's blessing, Sen. Joan Huffman filed legislation in the senate, with Appropriations Chairman Dr. John Zerwas filing a companion bill in the House, which dropped the traffic-fine increase to $20, tacked a new $2 fee on insurance policies, and jiggled the ratios around regarding who got what to make the hospitals whole.

The bill abolished surcharges for everyone but DWI offenders. They receive 12 percent of all surcharges, so 88 percent of surcharges will be eliminated going forward.

For everyone owing surcharges at the time the bill becomes law on September 1, 2019, the debt will be nullified along with the program. That will allow 1.5 million people whose licenses currently are suspended over nonpayment of surcharges to get their licenses back.

Some of these folks have gone without licenses for more than a decade because they couldn't pay, with surcharges compounding because they drove with revoked licenses. Since 2003, about 3 million people have racked up 16 million surcharges, with half of them losing their licenses permanently, until this bill.

For DWI offenders, the old "surcharges" were kept on the books and renamed criminal fines, tacked on in addition to other punishments already on the books for the offense. But in contrast to "civil" surcharges, judges can waive criminal fines for indigent people. Plus, Emily Gerrick of the Texas Fair Defense Project convinced the senate to add a provision creating a presumptive indigence provision for these fines similar to that for surcharges. And with those perfecting amendments, the bill passed the senate.

This is a moment your correspondent has been working toward for more than a decade. Long-time readers will recall Grits worked with Alison Brock at Rep. Sylvester Turner's office, to create amnesty/indigence provisions for the surcharge, and with Mandy Marzullo, now my podcast co-host at Reasonably Suspicious, to implement the rules at DPS. Hating on the program has been a pet project of mine nearly since the inception of this blog.

The surcharges were created in 2003, and by 2007, people driving with licenses suspended under the program had become a chronic problem. That year, the Legislature changed DWLI on the first offense from a Class B to a Class C misdemeanor because unlicensed surcharge-owing drivers were filling up local jails. They also added DWLI to a list of offenses, the most prominent of which was pot possession, for which police could give citations instead of arresting people. That temporarily stemmed jail overcrowding pressures, though today, in some counties, Class B DWLIs still account for large percentages of the misdemeanor docket.

Indeed, during the worst of it, before indigence provisions kicked in, judges told the Legislature they were sentencing DWI cases as reckless driving or obstruction of a roadway to avoid defendants racking up surcharges that everyone knew they couldn't pay.

So these surcharges have driven misdemeanor-justice policies in Texas in unexpected, weird, and mostly negative, regressive ways for many years now. It's an incredible relief that they're about to go away.

The Texas Legislature may not accomplish much in 2019 on justice reform. But this will help so many people, the one victory nearly outweighs the (heart breaking) losses.

14 comments:

  1. Out of curiosity, which politician was mostly responsible for creating these surcharges in the first place?

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  2. Mike Krusee was the progenitor, a rep from Round Rock. He's out of the Lege now but bf he left came to say he regretted them. Sylvester Turner, now Houston Mayor, was the person who got the half the money Krusee was raising for the hospitals instead of toll roads (it was originally a funding mechanism for Rick Perry's never-built Trans-Texas Corridor), but to his credit, he was also the first legislator to try to address its harms with indigence amnesty provisions, etc..

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  3. Can't thank you enough Scott, through sheer perseverance and determination you helped make a real world tangible impact on the quality of life for so many in TX.

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  4. Grits, thank you for keeping the spotlight on this issue for so long. The surcharge program has been a boot on the neck of poor people for too long. Congratulations to Texas for finally doing the right thing about it.

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  5. Great news! Thank you so much for all your time and work! Good riddance to bad legislation.

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  6. Hopefully there will not be the unintended consequence of unleashing 1.5 million more uninsured motorists onto the law-abiding public.

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  7. You done good, Grits!

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  8. Thank you, Scott, for making good things happen.

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  9. That was a terrible law - a reverse Robin Hood that criminalized random events. Congratulations on persisting to get repeal.
    I remember Rep. Vicki Truitt from Southlake as one champion of the law.

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  10. Ironically, Mike Krusee himself copped an arrest for DWI in 2008, but "coincidentally", it was dismissed, and he was never subjected to the law that he and the rest of the Lege foisted on the rest of the Texas driving public.

    To Anon 5/25/2019 03:26:00 PM: The bill doesn't do away with existing suspensions for other reasons, such as driving without insurance or a valid drivers license that was suspended for reasons other than surcharges. It doesn't take away other penalties such as a criminal fine, potential jail time, vehicle impoundments, etc.for uninsured motorists. This only does away with the ADDITIONAL 3 year surcharge that was imposed on top of other penalties, and the suspensions for failure or inability to pay the 3 year surcharge. Other penalties that are in force against a particular driver when the effective date comes around will remain in force. But if a driver is suspended SOLELY for unpaid surcharges, that driver is eligible for reinstatement, and they will have to be insured to legally drive. If not, then they are subject to penalties in the TTC and the Criminal Code that remain effective, not repealed. Only Section 708 will be repealed.

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  11. Glad to see a very bad law, that cost Texans thousands of dollars to administer, is off the books. We are probably much better off funding the trauma centers by other means. Add the welfare for the families who could not find work due to a suspended DL and the price tag was out of sight. Too bad the Surcharge is still there for DWI. It has become the vogue thing to hammer an offender until there is no recovery or rehab possible.

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  12. Tony (6/05/2019 11:12:00 PM)... I am actually very glad to see the punishments remaining harsh for DWI, and I'm also glad that it is renamed as a criminal fine. Judges then have the flexibility to adjust fines to a level that an offender is more likely going to be able to pay. If the offender can't pay and is able to meet certain clearly specified criteria (versus whatever impossibly low bar that judge wants to set), those fines can be discharged through community service. This wasn't possible under the DRP Surcharge program. These options will lessen the chance of someone getting their license suspended for inability to pay. But DWI drivers pose a hazard to themselves and to other people on the road, and the punishment for endangering others MUST be harsh. Getting behind the wheel is a choice, same as NOT getting behind the wheel and instead choosing to call a cab. an Uber/Lyft ride, or asking a friend for a pillow and blanket to sleep it off on the sofa. I get it, sometimes a person might have taken a new medicine and had an unexpected reaction to that legal prescription or OTC medicine. Yes, that is still DWI. But those cases are much more uncommon, and at least a person has the chance of explaining the situation in court and either getting the case dismissed under deferred adjudication, or getting a reduced punishment. That wasn't possible under the DRP. But for the 2 or three time drunk driver, or the one who really went to extremes... there must be harsh consequences. Did you know that if someone gets a DWI with a child under 15 in the car, it's a State Jail Felony and the fine is as much as $10,000? I only wish that those kinds of consequences existed when I was a child or teen, having to ride in the car with my father after he had been drinking! It's for THAT REASON, and also because I have lost friends after their car had been hit by a drunk driver (one of those friends was killed just weeks before her wedding to another school friend)... that I take such a dim view on DWI. And when I was seeing drunk drivers getting off with a lighter sentence than someone else whose only offense was "Driving While Poor", with not a drop of alcohol involved-- it angered me even more. Good for the stronger DWI/DUI penalties!

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  13. Megan, I guess you support the same punishment for texting while driving? If not you'd be a hypocrite

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    1. Or same punishment for running a stop sign or red light?

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