Collegiate Times

Late last month, Gov. Tim Kaine repealed the abusive driver fee law that was passed last July.

The law levied additional fines for reckless driving tickets ranging from $750 to $3,000 depending on the violation. Virginia citizens who were assessed the fines are in the process of being refunded.

The fees were a small section of a larger transportation bill designed to offset the costs of interstate maintenance in the commonwealth. The abusive driver fees were created in hopes of making $65 million for road maintenance.

"They didn't achieve that goal, and they were unpopular, so they were repealed," said Gordon Hickey, Kaine's press secretary.

Hickey said that Kaine will probably discuss where the road maintenance money will come from during a special session on transportation later this spring.

Nick Donohue, policy analyst with the Secretary of Transportation Office, said there is a shortfall of $1.1 billion in the state's six-year transportation plan. In this fiscal year, the plan is $260 million short, and the fiscal year 2009, which starts this July, will show a $388 million deficit. In fiscal year 2014, the deficit will increase to $575 million. The state's construction fund, called the Transportation Trust Fund, will have $370 million transferred to the waning road maintenance fund.

The "civil remedial" fees were initiated on July 1, 2007. Since then, about 58,000 Virginians had to pay the fines.

Pat McCall, deputy clerk supervisor at the Blacksburg Courthouse, said the court has not seen many citizens who received abusive driver fees. Of those who have come through the Blacksburg site, most were college-aged residents who not yet paid for their violations.

Across the state, about 23,000 of those charged had already started making payments before hearing that their fines were dropped.

Segt. R.J. Carpentieri, public information officer for the Virginia state police, said the repeal did not affect the station.

"We were just enforcing the law," Carpentieri said. "Now that it's repealed it doesn't really change anything."

He said the station hoped the higher fines would deter citizens from driving abusively, but they were not "in effect long enough to really see what kind of impact (they were) going to make."

He explained one problem with the legislation.

"It's a double-edged sword in a way, because it was just affecting Virginia drivers and not out-of-state drivers," Carpentieri said.

Many across the state did not react positively to the fines, particularly because they were only directed toward Virginians. Beside not providing the transportation funding the bill was meant to earn, the number of abusive driver instances also did not decrease in the nine months that it was valid. About 180,000 Virginians signed an online petition requesting that the law be repealed.

"I think it's pretty ridiculous," said sophomore psychology major Laura Gerlach. "It depends on the circumstance. I think they should take that into account."

Senior mechanical engineering major Mike Milo said the high fine for a DUI is "really apples to oranges" compared to a reckless driving fee.

"There can be mitigating circumstances behind speeding, but as far as I'm concerned, there's no excuse for getting behind the wheel of a car drunk, ever," Milo said.