A friend of mine said that he went in and offered to pay a fine instead of contesting it outright (maybe someone here knows more about this). They fined him and wrote it up as "Improper equipment" or something like that, which amounts to no points on his license. And the local municipality gets the revenue they wanted, anyway.
That's how it worked when I lived in Jersey...our city cops would ticket anyone with an out-of-state license plate, and when the court date came around, they'd knock the ticket to a no-points offense if they'd just pay the original fine. 99 percent of the people just paid....and probably never came through again.