Go Ahead And Collect

The State of California is broke.
   This is not really news to anyone, unless you're like most of the rest of the country and couldn't give a rat's ass about California, its fruits and nuts, and its problems. And God bless you if you don't care, I wish I couldn't.
   But I live here - for now - and the massive budget shortfall has sparked some drastic measures to try to make up that revenue. I'm talking specifically about the terrifically monstrous increases in traffic fines effective this year.
   For instance, if you got caught talking on a cell phone last year, the fine was $25. Arguably not a deterrent and almost laughable. This year, however, the fine is.... wait for it... $148. That is a TIMES SIX increase in the penalty. In-freaking-sane. Failure to notify the DMV of an address change? $214. Park in a handicapped spot and you're not actually handicapped? $1000. Run a red light? $436. Which is also in-freaking-sane because running a red light is the only way to make a left in most of LA.
   Aside from pure shock value, raising the traffic fines this much has to be the stupidest thing I've ever seen California do. And I've lived here nine years (sheesh).
   Let me 'splain...
   I wasn't there, but I know how this came about. Some nimrod bureaucrat was told to find revenue that is not subject to legislative oversight or voter approval. They came up with traffic fines. Some douchebag MBA in Sacramento then looked at the number of, say, cell phone citations and came up with a number. We'll call it 10,000. They said to themselves 'self, if there are 10,000 cell phone violations at $25 each, that's $250,000 to the state. Hmm... what if we raised the fine to, I don't know, $148? Wow! We'd get almost $1.5 million! Hokey smokes! Let's do that!"
   And so they raised the rates, assuming that the number of violations would at least remain constant. It won't, but let's give them that one, let's assume that 10,000 citations last year will mean 10,000 citations this year. That doesn't mean they're actually going to get $1.5 million dollars, though.
   This flawed bureaucratic thinking ignores one fundamental part of this equation. Nobody has that kind of money.* The state can write all the citations it wants, but with the fines raised this much people just aren't going to pay. Really. It happened with overpriced mortgages and it's going to happen with this.
   Think about it. If you make $50,000 a year gross, that means you'll net about $40,000 after taxes, at least in California, or about $3300 a month. You're in a hurry to get into Wal-Mart (for some reason) and you park in the handicapped spot. You come out to find a ticket for ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS on your windshield, or 2.5% of your ANNUAL take-home pay.
   Would you pay it? Of course not. Nobody else will either.
   So then what? The state is counting on that $1.5 million from cell phone citations to cover their other gross incompetence in other areas. But they're going to collect an even lower percentage of citations this year than ever before. Which means they'll have to spend money to hire people to go after the money they're owed. Which they're not going to get. And California goes deeper into the crapper, waiting for home prices to come back, which is also not going to happen.
   You couldn't mismanage this worse if you'd planned it out ahead of time.


* Unless you're an investment banker, and if you are your time against the wall is coming, trust me. I'm serious.