The House Transportation Committee took up  HB 4726 yesterday, 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 Rep. Roy Schmidt (D-Grand Rapids), who is a former City Commissioner, in an attempt to assist local governments in recouping the dollars owed to them by people with outstanding parking tickets, especially now when the state is cutting revenue sharing and cities are struggling for every penny.  Grand Rapids officials 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 testified 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, and quoted the City of Detroit Director of Municipal Parking who said that Detroit has $30 million in outstanding unpaid parking tickets. The League supported the bill in committee and thanks Rep. Roy Schmidt for continuing to think about the needs of the urban areas of the state.

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