Because lawmakers wanted the revenue for highway maintenance, they enacted the surcharges as fees, which Virginia is powerless to collect outside its boundaries. The state can collect fines from out-of-state motorists, but state Constitution requires those revenues to be used exclusively for education.
Probably need to ammend the state constitution and make transportation fines exclusive to transportation uses.
Hon - maybe if you lived in Virginia you’d understand where I’m coming from. I’ve lived through budget battles about paying for roads. The gov is a tax-raising, lying dem. This abuser fee is purely a revenue-generating mechanism. It has nothing whatsoever to do with safety. The gov just throws that in as an afterthought. I fully understand the constitutional issues you raise. It’s irrelevant to my mind - there was no budget crisis that required increasing revenues to pay for roads. Gov. Gridlock and his pals pushed this through hoping that the sheeple wouldn’t notice.
They were wrong.
You're right, I did not read to end and will take my beating for that; however, I did read the VA Constitution and saw nothing in there saying that fines for out-of-state motorists must be used for public education. In fact, I didn't see any reference at all to fines for out-of-state drivers. We all know that just because an AP reporter says it, doesn't necessarily make it so.
There is some reason, of course, that it wasn't applied to out-of-state drivers. Maybe their hands are tied in some manner. Maybe they don't want to discourage people from travelling through the state. Maybe they were afraid of a challenge under the commerce clause of the US Constitution.
Interestingly, I did see two provisions of interest in the VA Constitution that could impact this matter. I'm paraphrasing, but the first says that there can be no excessive fines and the second says that people in similar circumstances must be taxed in a similar manner. This is either a fine or a tax or a combination of the two and it would seem to violate one or both of those provisions.
Anyway, there are enough arguments against the constitutionality of this law that I don't see how it can stand. The most amazing thing is that the Legilature had the audacity to enact it in the first place. Of course, maybe they took their cue from McCain-Feingold.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus