Speeding? Get out your wallet!
Like to drive fast?
Well, you’d better be prepared to pay for it.
Beginning Wednesday, fines for a variety of common traffic offenses are going up, in some cases by as much as 60 percent.
The new fees are the result of a Supreme Court subcommittee that analyzed the fines and then recommended the increases. They are the first increases since 1993.
“Everybody was in agreement the amount should go up because it’s been 17 years since the last increase. We realized that the consumer price index had gone up a whole lot in that time. We realized we were less than a lot of the states,” said Champaign County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Ford, who chaired the committee.
The increases pertain to those situations in which motorists get ticketed but aren’t required to show up in traffic court. Instead, they typically plead guilty, pay the ticketing officer or mail in a payment to the court as bond and have that payment stand as the eventual fine for the offense.
The standard fine for speeding up to 20 mph over the limit will increase from $75 to $120. Those who go 20 to 29 mph over the speed limit will see their fine increase from $95 to $140.
And drivers caught topping the speed limit by more than 30 mph will pay $160, a $55 increase.
Other increases in fines include raising the penalty for seatbelt violations by $5 to $60. Fines for unlawful use of a license jumps to $1,500 from $750, while unlicensed driving or misdemeanor driving with a suspended or revoked license will draw a $1,500 fine, up $500. The same increase applies to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
The higher fines will generate more money for local governments and the state police, but the courts, the secretary of state’s office and the Illinois Municipal League can’t say how much.
But that additional money is going to take plenty of work on a local level.
Fine money is broken down to an ever-increasing number of places, and Bureau County Circuit Clerk Laurie Abraham said some tickets have 18 different breakdowns. With the new fines, none of the old breakdowns are applicable, and employee Dawn Reglin has been working to come up with the new breakdowns.
Under the Illinois Supreme Court rules, up to $30 is taken off the top of the fine for various court fees, and the rest of the fine is divided up among the local government, the state treasurer and the county general fund. After the court fees are subtracted from the fine, the local government receives 44.5 percent, the state treasurer 16.825 percent and 38.675 percent goes into the general fund of the county where the offense took place.
As long as an offender doesn’t violate any specific municipality code, they are charged the same for a traffic violation, whether the code is written by city police, a sheriff’s deputy or the Illinois State Police. All tickets are written according to the Illinois Vehicle Code.
Abraham said she has no idea how much more money this could mean for Bureau County.
But if area law enforcement officers continue their recent ticket-writing pattern, it won’t mean as much as it would have a few years ago.
The number of tickets being written is down — way down. Abraham said there used to be about 5,000 tickets written each year. Last year that number dropped below 4,600, and this year it’s only 2,300 for the first eight months of the year.
“It all makes a big difference,” she said. “But the higher ticket prices will help.”
Abraham’s office has been working on the change for months, sending notices to the various agencies in the county. But part of the problem is the tickets are preprinted, and the no longer correct fine amounts are listed on the back.
It will all come down to getting the correct fine information to the officers on the street.
“Otherwise we’re never going to get the right amount of bond money,” she said.
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