While you may blame Governor Kaine for allowing the “civil remedial fees” to apply only to Virginia drivers (you’d have a hard time assessing fines for demerit points on out-of-state drivers anyway, so there goes half your chances), Governor Kaine managed to save your keister a couple sections later.
Version sent to Governor:
D. For the purposes of this section:
1. A finding of guilty in the case of a juvenile and a conviction under substantially similar laws of any locality, territory, other state, or of the United States, shall be a conviction.
Governor’s substitute:
D. For the purposes of subsection C:
1. A finding of guilty in the case of a juvenile and a conviction under a substantially similar valid local ordinance of any locality of the Commonwealth, shall be a conviction.
Yeah, that’s right, Dave Albo wanted to make sure if you, the in-state driver, were caught speeding anywhere in the United States and its territories, you would get civil remedial fines slapped on you. Under the Albo plan, it still is worse to be a Virginia resident. You would have to run to Mexico for safety from the “civil remedial fees”.
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Hmm, does that section mean that we could slap remedial fees against any citizen of any state that violated that state’s driving laws?
Or was that section only valid for Virginia residents.
Other questions:
- Do these fines apply to non-citizens who are in Virginia illegally?
- Wouldn’t it make SENSE to apply these fees to Virginian’s who speed in other states? Otherwise a Virginian would be punished more severely for breaking the law in Virginia than they would be if they did it in another state — and remember, if we do so, we’ll just chase Virginians who live near the border to those neighboring jurisdictions to do their speeding, which means OTHER states, and not Virginia, would get all that extra revenue
Why would we need a special session? The only thing that Kaine needs to call is a press conference: “Don’t speed.”
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[...] Eric at Raising Kaine also has some excellent thoughts about the impact of this bill, including that, since it’s entirely about money (and they say so in the bill), we could easily see police ignoring out-of-state lawbreakers to focus on Virginia drivers. And (this is bug-fuck nutty) Tim Kaine nixed an idea that Virginia drivers would be penalized with these user fees at home if they broke the law in another state.  Seriously. [...]