World's first "crowd sourced" public policy initiative
Thursday 25 October 2012
Regulatory Agencies Cannot Directly Access Fine Monies Collected By Them
An agency should shape and report their work only in accordance
with their publicly sponsored mandate. Fine monies should not guide an
institution designed for the public good.
This issue will need some background. Over the last number of years the police and the parking authority have become significantly more active in enforcing various motorist indiscretions. The fines have gone up too. One of the reasons for this is that the agencies levying the penalties appear to get to include parts of the gravy from those collections to defray costs within their own budgets. Sometimes revenue from photo radar is split between the city, the province and the provider.
The whole idea of enforcement was originally structured as being safety enhancements. The reality is that it has shifted far away from the original intent to cash grabs from the creation of new revenue streams.
Those cash grabs hit the mobile active working person disproportionately hard and diminish discretionary entrepreneurial activity. You simply do not see the same degree of oppressive administrative behaviour in other competitive jurisdictions. What we have done is brought back the much despised "Sheriff of Nottingham" by the legalizing of highwaymen who make a living shaking down travelers.
Our first response to this one is to create a disincentive to this shake down by demanding that funds collected from those penalties neither remain with the enforcement bodies nor be considered as offsets to their budgets.
This way appropriate resources will be allocated to the enforcement process and empire building will stop.
Several ways of sensibly dealing with that collected pot of funds will be the subject of the next post.
In the previous comment, the concept of separating fine money from the enforcement agencies was discussed. Manitoba United is suggesting that these funds be segregated into a trust fund away from politician’s personal agendas with specific conditions of how those dollars could be spent. Here are four areas we think make sense.
1) Victims of crimes – everybody wrings their hands but this could be something tangible for a loss. You would want to be sure the crime was not drug or gang related nor could the compensation be considered complete nor could it substitute for civil action but this use makes sense.
2) Diversion of at risk youth – we need a mentor program for first offenders not a bunch of social programs for non offenders – more on this in another sector.
3) Driver advocate – we need someone sticking up for the design operational readiness and efficiency of our corridors of commerce. Transit has its own huge buracracy and advocacy – the Parking authority has lots of managers and promoters - even the bike lobbyists (who do not pay their own way) have lobbyists. It is about time drivers had a say.
4) Residential video security subsidies – although this topic will be covered more thoroughly elsewhere , for now it is worth noting that we need some funding to pilot the idea of residential camera subsidies in key sections of the city. The subsidy would come as an exchange agreement for the free use of video when there has been some type of nearby neighbourhood incident.
Fines and fees are much more palatable when people see the good use they are being put to.
Above and beyond the idea of separating fine funds, there remains an issue of traffic safety. When you get a ticket for traffic enforcement from the a camera compared to a police officer, it has both the problem of not targeting an actual driver and as well not having the rapid and correct educational effect on the proper driver’s behaviour. From an enforcement perspective, cameras do not offer the immediate human look at the driver to determine if he or she should be taken off the road right away for impaired or if he or she is already wanted for something else. There have been cost comparisons in terms of exchanging the camera enforcement for human enforcement and they are relatively comparable (revenue neutral) if politicians stop treating traffic safety as a cash cow.
Again to the concept of traffic safety, if we were to keep any photo enforcement, it should be minimal. If safety is the true concern, cameras could be limited to the top five collision intersections in the city and the top five (and maybe not that many) school locations where a child has been injured in the past two years. Let human enforcement be the norm not the exception.
This issue will need some background. Over the last number of years the police and the parking authority have become significantly more active in enforcing various motorist indiscretions. The fines have gone up too. One of the reasons for this is that the agencies levying the penalties appear to get to include parts of the gravy from those collections to defray costs within their own budgets. Sometimes revenue from photo radar is split between the city, the province and the provider.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea of enforcement was originally structured as being safety enhancements. The reality is that it has shifted far away from the original intent to cash grabs from the creation of new revenue streams.
Those cash grabs hit the mobile active working person disproportionately hard and diminish discretionary entrepreneurial activity. You simply do not see the same degree of oppressive administrative behaviour in other competitive jurisdictions. What we have done is brought back the much despised "Sheriff of Nottingham" by the legalizing of highwaymen who make a living shaking down travelers.
Our first response to this one is to create a disincentive to this shake down by demanding that funds collected from those penalties neither remain with the enforcement bodies nor be considered as offsets to their budgets.
This way appropriate resources will be allocated to the enforcement process and empire building will stop.
Several ways of sensibly dealing with that collected pot of funds will be the subject of the next post.
In the previous comment, the concept of separating fine money from the enforcement agencies was discussed. Manitoba United is suggesting that these funds be segregated into a trust fund away from politician’s personal agendas with specific conditions of how those dollars could be spent. Here are four areas we think make sense.
ReplyDelete1) Victims of crimes – everybody wrings their hands but this could be something tangible for a loss. You would want to be sure the crime was not drug or gang related nor could the compensation be considered complete nor could it substitute for civil action but this use makes sense.
2) Diversion of at risk youth – we need a mentor program for first offenders not a bunch of social programs for non offenders – more on this in another sector.
3) Driver advocate – we need someone sticking up for the design operational readiness and efficiency of our corridors of commerce. Transit has its own huge buracracy and advocacy – the Parking authority has lots of managers and promoters - even the bike lobbyists (who do not pay their own way) have lobbyists. It is about time drivers had a say.
4) Residential video security subsidies – although this topic will be covered more thoroughly elsewhere , for now it is worth noting that we need some funding to pilot the idea of residential camera subsidies in key sections of the city. The subsidy would come as an exchange agreement for the free use of video when there has been some type of nearby neighbourhood incident.
Fines and fees are much more palatable when people see the good use they are being put to.
Above and beyond the idea of separating fine funds, there remains an issue of traffic safety. When you get a ticket for traffic enforcement from the a camera compared to a police officer, it has both the problem of not targeting an actual driver and as well not having the rapid and correct educational effect on the proper driver’s behaviour. From an enforcement perspective, cameras do not offer the immediate human look at the driver to determine if he or she should be taken off the road right away for impaired or if he or she is already wanted for something else. There have been cost comparisons in terms of exchanging the camera enforcement for human enforcement and they are relatively comparable (revenue neutral) if politicians stop treating traffic safety as a cash cow.
Again to the concept of traffic safety, if we were to keep any photo enforcement, it should be minimal. If safety is the true concern, cameras could be limited to the top five collision intersections in the city and the top five (and maybe not that many) school locations where a child has been injured in the past two years. Let human enforcement be the norm not the exception.