Judiciary seeks hefty boost in fees for traffic violations

By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

A speeding ticket will cost you $20 more and a parking ticket an additional $5 under a bill approved by the Senate Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee yesterday.

House Bill 2294 would double administrative fees for processing traffic and parking citations, which are in addition to the fines.

The administrative fee for parking tickets would rise from $5 to $10. The fee for moving violations such as speeding, driving without a license and running a red light would increase from $20 to $40 per violation.

Further, administrative fees would be increased from $15 to $30 for equipment violations, such as illegal reconstruction, expired safety checks and not having license plates or registration decals.

The Judiciary wants the additional revenues from the hundreds of thousands of traffic and parking tickets issued annually statewide to go to a special fund to pay for its new Judiciary Information Management System, a modern, integrated system that will cost more than $12 million over the next decade.

In fiscal year 2002-2003, the Judiciary filed 421,775 moving and parking violations.

Appeals Court Judge Corinne Watanabe, co-chairwoman for the Judiciary's Executive Committee on Technology and Information Management, estimated the new fees would bring in about between $2.8 million and $3 million annually.

The new system will allow staff to handle traffic cases electronically. It also would allow 24-hour access by the public to case information and documents.

State budget director Georgina Kawamura testified against the bill during a public hearing Wednesday.

Kawamura said the special fund already gets $2 from the fee for traffic abstracts and that separate legislation approved last year established new fees for civil filings to be placed into the fund.

She also noted that the special fund received more than $900,000 in revenues in fiscal year 2003 and ended the year with a $2.1 million balance.

"We believe they have ample funds," Kawamura said, adding that any additional funds allocated for the computer system should be appropriated through the normal budget process, subject to other state priorities and the general fund expenditure ceiling.

Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Nanakuli, Makaha), however, supports giving the Judiciary a source of money for its computer system.

"We've never had the general fund money that's permitted them to go forward with it," she said, adding that complaints about the backup in the court system can be addressed in large measure by the new technology. "Unless they have some kind of constant flow of money coming in, they're not going to be able to do it."

Hanabusa said she doesn't feel bad about imposing additional fees on traffic violators.

"This is a penalty, it's not a tax," she said. "You don't have to drive over the speed limit."

The added fees also may give extra incentive for motorists not commit violations, she said.

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.

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