Holly Springs, GA can’t tell the difference between taxes and fines.
http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20080618/1a_bottomstrip18_dom.art.htm
HOLLY SPRINGS, Ga. — The surging price of gasoline has come to this: a “fuel surcharge” on your next speeding ticket.
Drivers caught speeding in this north Atlanta suburb soon will have to pay an extra $12 — to cover $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.
The City Council passed the fee hike, effective July 1, to offset fuel prices that have eaten up nearly 60% of the police department’s 2008 fuel budget, Police Chief Ken Ball says.
He expects the fee increase, which applies to all moving violations and can be rescinded if gas prices fall below $3 a gallon, to generate $19,500 to $26,000 a year for the town of 7,700.
This means that they expect to ticket 1,625 to 2,166 people this year. That’s between 21% and 28% of the general population. Does a quarter of the population really get a ticket every year?
Holly Springs Mayor Tim Downing says: “This is a self-taxing system. If you don’t break the law, you don’t pay the tax.”
I imagine that a statement like this could only be made if one viewed fines for breaking the law as a primary revenue stream for a community. The excessive number of tickets seems to me to suggest that lots of their tickets are given to through traffic, not citizens of Holly Springs.
EDITED TO ADD: Hey, thanks Wikipedia!
The City of Holly Springs recently annexed all the way down to Sixes Road, and their police have been seen giving out many tickets along this stretch of road, leading some to believe it may be used as a speed trap in order to increase city revenue. Holly Springs was notorious for decades for the speed trap it had set up on the former S.R. 5 prior to the completion of I-575 and has apparently carried over this practice to the interstate.
I guess that in this age of $4 gas, even small-town revenue enforcers police departments have to figure out ways to make ends meet.
Taxes are what a government collects to pay its bills and keep public services running. Fines are primarily intended to punish those who do wrong. When municipality-employed peace officers get tasked with punishing more folks to turn the latter into the former, there is born a deep conflict of interest.