Say Anything Blog

In Tuesday’s Grand Forks Herald (apparently not on their website) Tu Uyen Tran has a story about the recent North Dakota Supreme Court decision ruling that certain cities were charging higher traffic fines then they were legally allowed to do.  Here’s a copy of the court ruling.

Now I suppose the city councils and the like that were charging these exorbitant fines were operating in good faith and thought their actions were justified under the home rule charters they were granted by the state.  On the other hand suppose the phone company were charging people in our city hundreds of thousands of dollars they weren’t entitled to.  I’m sure that people would be outraged and demanding criminal charges to be filed.  The city attorney (who’s probably the most responsible for the illegal fines levied by the city) would be demanding refunds.

Why is it that they aren’t even talking about refunding the money to where it goes?  It seems to me that if they weren’t entitled to the money they need to pay it back, with sincere apologies.  Just to clear the air the only fine I’ve ever paid in Grand Forks city limits was a $13 fine for going 43 mph on North Washington.

But rather than being sheepish about levying fines they weren’t entitled to and collecting them with the full force of the law certain people in the city government think they’re entitled to keep collecting the money.  They want to lobby the state legislature to allow them to charge what they were charging.  How arrogant is that.  They were taking up to $200,000 a year illegally by force and when caught on the matter they want to just make it legal. 

If this was a private entity people would be talking investigation and fines. 

Councilman Kreun says that it’s not about the money.  He says that it’s about safety.  Well I remember at least one time when the fines were greatly increased by the city government and at that time it WAS about the money.  But if that’s really the case then they should offer to donate the money to charity rather than keeping it in the city coffers.  By the way Tu Uyen Tran who was the reporter of this story had an excellent blog post about how he doesn’t believe traffic fines slow down drivers. It’s worth a read.