Atlanta is thinking of adding a $15 charge to speeding fines in order to cover the cost of increasing petrol prices and their consumption by council vehicles.
The nature of government taxation has been changing over the past decade or so. Rather than direct taxes, a new form of revenue raising has appeared where 'bad people' or politically indefensible people are having excess fees tacked on to them in order for governments to raise revenue.
A good recent, and blatant, example of this process was Virginia tacking on extra fees to speeding fines for out of state drivers, not Virginia drivers. It was quickly deemed unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, however, it shows that the goal of the policy was to raise revenue from 'bad people' without a political cost; ie tacking the fees on to Virginia voters.
The speeding cameras in Scottsdale, AZ are another case in point. The local council now raises approximately 6 million a year from them. No-one likes them and they cause traffic jams, however, the local council needs them for revenue. Rather than taking a case to the voting public as to why taxes should be raised to cover government expenditures and programs; instead a group of people who are hard to defend - speeders - are targeted. Fortunately speeding is done by a majority of drivers so it is a constant source of revenue. Fortunately for the government most drivers treat it like a road tax.
The state of Arizona is thinking of adding more cameras across the major Routes and as further example of how it is being used for revenue raising without political ramifications they are going to share the revenue with the local councils to get them on board with the project.
This is the same reason why speeding fines are so high in Australia. The Queensland government offers payback mechanisms across many payments for its speeding fines. You know a fine is too high when that is the case. It is currently something like $700 for a 140kmh speeding ticket. Very easy to do on some of the open Australian highways when over-taking.
If governments want more revenue to increase services then they should make a political case for it, not raise revenue through under-hand methods by extracting fees from a politically indefensible action. It is the same process as stripping rights from a politically repugnant faction or a group that is hard to defend politically (ie immigrants when whipping up nativism).
It is bad policy and needs to stop.
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