This Blog was brought to you by the San Antonio Traffic Ticket Attorney Gordon Slade
Could Everyone Be Wrong?
Would you consider it possible that every municipality that enforces traffic law in Texas is in horrendous violation of that very same law? This is
insane. Of over 6.6 million traffic citations written each year, only those written by the Texas Department of Public Safety are legal.
Municipal Enforcement Problems
There are only a very few non-DPS officers recognized by the Department of Public Safety. To be exact, there are 27 in the entire state according to
the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Governmental Concerns
The Interim Report of the 85th Texas Legislature expressed concern about COMMERCIAL MOTOR VEHICLE STANDARDS & ENFORCEMENT expresses concerns that those cities authorized to enforce the traffic code are not properly reporting their activity and not forwarding the required funds to the state:
Provisions in the Transportation Code 644.102 stipulate that the monies collected from the fines associated with the citations can be retained by the city or county to recover their costs of enforcement. In each fiscal year, a county or municipality may retain fines from the enforcement of this
chapter in an amount not to exceed 110 percent of the municipality’s actual expenses for enforcement. A municipality or county sends to the comptroller
the proceeds of all fines that exceed this limit, and the comptroller then deposits the remaining funds to the credit of the Texas Department of
Transportation. It is up to the local authority to determine and report its cost of enforcement. In contrast, when DPS tickets a truck driver for a
violation a portion of the money generated by fines stays in the county in which the ticket was issued. Since 1997 the comptroller’s office has received a total of $569,960.09 in excess motor carrier fines from 9 cities. Most of the cities and counties collecting these fines have never remitted any money back to the state.
Recommendations
Ensure that commercial motor vehicle enforcement is being conducted for public safety purposes and work with the State Comptroller’s office to ensure that collected penalties are properly remitted.
Require objective criteria as a demonstration of the need to accompany requests for local authorities to be granted CMV enforcement.
They think the municipalities enforcing the code are cheating. Would municipalities actually cheat? Of course, they would when they have good reason to believe they can with impunity. And, where do you think those cities that actually reported got the half a billion dollars they turned in?