By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Driving is a privilege, not a right. In rural Kansas, where drivers have few options for public transportation and may travel miles in the cold or heat to get to a job or take kids to school, it may seem more like a necessity. Last week, Senate Bill 500 regarding license suspensions for failure to pay went before the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee. A similar bill failed to gain traction last year. Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice has been a big proponent behind changes to existing law, and Deputy Director Mike Fonkert is hopeful for change this session.
"It just continues to be the notion that the legislature views people who are trapped in this suspension cycle as bad actors or people who are willfully disobeying the laws when the reality is these are poor Kansans who are having to make tough decisions about where their limited resources go," he said. "If you're trying to pay rent or buy groceries, your traffic ticket gets put on the back burner."
Under current law, a 30-day notice is sent to drivers who have not paid their fines or made arrangements with the court to do so. After that 30 days, the driver's license will be suspended. Courts assess $100 for each violation on the citation and an additional $22 reinstatement fee is added. In some instances, that can result in additional fees of several hundred dollars beyond the fines assessed by the court. Fonkert said the current system hurts many and benefits few.
"Everywhere they've looked at that issue across the country, there is no evidence that it's an effective practice or a necessary practice to get people to pay their traffic tickets," he said. "There's no empirical evidence that suspending a license increases the likelihood of anyone actually paying their tickets. The reality is that suspending someone's license for failure to pay actually makes them less likely to be able to pay that fine or fee in the end."
Data collected by Appleseed indicates that in fiscal year 2022, 896 licenses were suspended for failure to pay in Barton County. In 2021, that number was 1,659. Pawnee County had 229 suspended licenses in 2021, and 178 in 2022. Data collected by Kansas Legal Services showed more than 200,000 suspended licenses across the state in 2022, with approximately 70 percent of those suspensions due to failure to pay - the sixth-highest rate in the country. The Kansas Department of Revenue may also issue suspensions for driving while intoxicated or driving without liability insurance.
A person convicted a second time for driving while suspended faces a mandatory 5-day jail sentence and fines. A person with three convictions of driving while suspended faces a mandatory 90-day jail sentence and a fine of not less than $1,500. In 2021, Gov. Laura Kelly signed Senate Bill 127 with minor changes to the law. Advocacy groups like Appleseed Kansas want more.
"The version they're working on is moving toward restricting rather than suspending," Fonkert said. "There are quite a few pieces in there that are good, but several of the pieces are much more complicated than we feel they rightfully need to be. Again, we're not talking about people who are totally disobeying the law. We're talking about a group of Kansans who are making tough decisions about what money they have to pay on which of their bills. This moves us in a positive direction but we feel like we can make some changes along the way that will make it a much stronger bill."
Proposed changes in SB 500 include changing suspensions to restrictions once "substantial compliance" has been made on the terms of the citation. Those restrictions would allow Kansans to continue driving to work, going to medical-related events, going to corrections meetings or rehabilitation meetings, and transporting children to and from school. The proposal would also reduce the multiple reinstatement fees per citation to just one $100 fee.
"We can clearly show there are 20-plus states that don't suspend licenses for failure to pay, and the sky has not fallen in those states," Fonkert said. "They continue to collect on their traffic citations at statistically unchanged levels when they go through the reform process."
Prior proposals have failed to make their way to the governor's desk. A spokeswoman for the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration said in a 2021 article that personnel costs made up approximately 91 percent of the state courts' budget for the prior fiscal year. Eliminating fees surrounding suspensions would have meant a 44 percent reduction in revenue for the 2022 fiscal year. A special counsel to the Kansas Supreme Court said until the courts can get a separate and equal amount of replacement funding, changes would jeopardize the state's ability to pay court employees.