The House Judiciary Committee passed SB 130, which would lower the number of parking citations that prevents motorists from renewing their driver's license from 6 to 3 under state law. The bill was introduced by Sen. Dave Hildenbrand (R-Lowell) in an attempt to assist local governments in recouping the dollars owed to them by people with outstanding parking tickets. It passed on a bi-partisan vote out of committee.
This is especially to local governments now, when the state is cutting revenue sharing and communities are struggling for every penny. Grand Rapids officials testified on this bill and said that the city wrote off $550,000 last year in unpaid parking tickets and currently the people with three to five citations owe the city $895,000. They said that there is just about $900,000 in revenue owed to the city for people with between three and five tickets and those are tickets owed by 5,400 different people. Officials also said that this bill will also help citizens because their cars are being impounded now instead of allowing them to go to the court and get a payment plan. The Detroit News had a good article on this last year, and quoted the City of Detroit Director of Municipal Parking who said that Detroit had $30 million in outstanding unpaid parking tickets. The League supported the bill in committee this year, and when the bill was sponsored by Rep. Roy Schmidt (D-Grand Rapids) in the House last year.
Andy Schor is the Assistant Director of State Affairs for the Michigan Municipal League. Contact him at (517) 908-0300 or by email at aschor@mml.org.
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