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Follow TURFToll violator owes more than $80,000 in fines, fees
It's sort of misleading to assume that all those who have unpaid tolls are automatically "violators." Remember that those who don't have toll tags and who happen to use the toll roads with no way to pay cash get billed by mail. They get these fees tacked onto their first bill. If they protest the fees at all, the longer it drags out, the more fees and fines get tacked on. I've heard from plenty of folks who are happy to pay the toll they owe, but feel the fees and fines are not their responsibility since they had no way to pay cash.
Why should anyone have to pay $25-$100 or more for a $2 toll when they had no way to pay cash? TxDOT often tries to settle by forcing people to buy a TollTag from now on, even if the person doesn't want to take the toll roads regularly (or if they don't even live in Austin). So some see it as a way to force people into buying accounts and creating regular customers who then drawdown that money they were forced to hand over to buy the tag (and submitting against their will to a form of government tracking) to get out of trouble. So while Mr. Qear offers a "simple" solution to this problem, ie - just stay off the toll roads or pay your tolls, it isn't so simple when you factor in the pay-by-mail scam.
Swift justice? Not for toll scofflaws
Ben Wear: Getting There
Published: 8:23 p.m. Sunday, March 27, 2011 - Austin American Statesman
When a local TV station reported last week on the conviction of a Pflugerville man for not paying his toll bill, the showiest numbers were the more than $80,000 that Charles Ackridge now owes (most of it fees and fines) and the 4,000 times or so that the Texas Department of Transportation alleges his vehicles roamed their tollways without paying.
But the figure that stood out to me in the KXAN report was somewhat smaller: One.
As in, he was tried and convicted in a Taylor justice of the peace court of failing to pay one toll. If TxDOT wants to recover its unpaid money the hard way, the justice system would have to go to court several thousand more times.
At first blush, that struck me as astonishing, and as a compelling hint to people thinking that maybe they can get away with evading tolls the overwhelming amount of the time. Williamson County, and in fact the entire State of Texas, just don't have enough prosecutors and judges to handle that sort of caseload.
As usual, it's nowhere near that simple.
First of all, even if TxDOT wanted to bundle hundreds or thousands of unpaid tolls in one case (and it doesn't, officials tell me) Ackridge, who could not be reached for comment, has the right under Texas law to "sever" those individual counts and be tried separately on each one. In this case, Williamson County prosecutor Jackie Borcherding said, TxDOT and the county attorney's office filed against him for three allegedly unpaid tolls, and Ackridge and his lawyer broke that into three cases.
After a jury deliberation that Borcherding said may have lasted as long as seven minutes (someone must have needed to answer nature's call), Ackridge was found guilty of not paying that single $1.60 toll and was fined $250. Counting the toll and court costs, the total tab was $410.
That is still far below the almost $20,000 that Borcherding said the state is willing to take in a settlement. Wouldn't it be a good strategic move just to force prosecutors to try them one at a time, which Borcherding said the county attorney's office is prepared to do?
But remember, she said, you can't use a public defender for a Class C misdemeanor case. Ackridge, or anyone else facing allegations of failing to pay scads of toll charges, likely would be paying a lawyer to help them in each case. The fees could stack up pretty quickly.
Or an accused serial toll scofflaw could act as his own lawyer, which as the proverb says would mean he has a fool for a client. The jury just might huddle in the box, football-style, clap hands and return a guilty verdict within seven seconds.
As it happens, the toll authorities in Austin — TxDOT with its four tollways and the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority with its single road — have rather long naughty lists. TxDOT has 386 individual accounts (basically, vehicles, so one person could appear on that list more than once) with more than 1,000 delinquent tolls. And an impressive 12,375 accounts have more than 100 unpaid toll charges.
The mobility authority, using a somewhat different data sort as a measure, has 2,167 vehicles that each owe more than $250 in unpaid tolls. Those are teed up for court right now, and authority spokesman Steve Pustelnyk said the plan is to do about 25 of them each week.
So, both the accused and the accusers have ample incentive to reach some sort of middle ground. But just in case that's not enough, legislation is percolating over at the Capitol that would cap the fees and fines for each unpaid toll. At the same time, however, the legislation would put a hold on renewing a vehicle's license and registration if unpaid tolls were attached to that tag. Pony up or park it, in other words.
There is, of course, one other solution to all this, and it really is simple: Pay your tolls, or stay off the toll roads. Nah, probably too simple.