Colorado state lawmakers don’t get fined when they get caught speeding by photo radar and they don’t have to pay parking tickets, all thanks to special license plates each legislator is issued upon taking office.
The plates make it clear which legislative district the driver of the car represents, but their home addresses are not entered into the state motor vehicle database. That means that speeding tickets resulting from mobile photo radar vans have nowhere to be sent.
Not only does that mean that state lawmakers aren’t held accountable for speeding, but in some rare circumstances, innocent civilians can be stuck with the bill.
That happened when speeding tickets that should have been issued to Democratic Sen. Michael Johnston were wrongly sent to Evonne Estis. Estis had a vanity plate with the number 33, which is the number Johnston has on his license plate as the representative from Senate District 33.
When told of the mistake by an investigative reporter from the local CBS station, Johnston paid the tickets and said he would work to fix the glitch in the system.
But the same also happens with parking tickets — lawmakers are free to ignore them because parking enforcement relies on the same database to send reminder notices to those who don’t pay. Average citizens who ignore their citations are eventually referred to collections, but lawmakers aren’t.
““Because the Department of Public Works relies on the DMV database to contact people with unpaid parking citations, we are not able to contact legislators with unpaid parking tickets,” Denver Public Works spokesperson Emily Williams told CBS4.
The station found that at least 16 lawmakers have unpaid parking tickets totaling $2,100.
“It’s absolutely unfair if there are legislators who are receiving photo radar tickets and then not getting that in the mail,” Republican Rep. Chris Holbert told the station. “If we are violating the law, we should be held accountable just like every other citizen.”
Despite their professed desire to fix this unfair loophole, lawmakers have been aware of the problem for years. The now-defunct news website Face the State first reported about it in 2011.
And even though Williams initially told CBS4 that Denver Public Works would track down the scofflaw lawmakers and make them pay their unpaid tickets, the station later reported that she had a change of heart.
“Williams said now that would be too costly and perhaps too difficult to figure out,” the station wrote on its website.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.