Why Isn’t the City Writing More Tickets for Expired License Plates?

Though it’s widely believed that traffic fines are a cash cow for local governments, nationwide they account for less than 1% of state and local revenues.

Pedaling past parked cars in Kenton. (Chris Nesseth)
By Marty Smith

I’m amazed at how many vehicles have expired license plates, or none at all. The fine for that infraction is about $250. I figure two well-equipped cops on some busy street would cost about $1,500 a day with overhead; in that time, the pair could easily write tickets worth double that. That’s $1,500-plus in daily profit for the city. Why isn’t this happening? —Indignant Entrepreneur

I can’t tell whether you’ve never gotten a traffic ticket (maybe you’re a scrupulously law-abiding Walter Mitty type) or you just refuse to pay them (maybe you’re one of those guys who stands on his porch with an AR-15, “Come and Take It” tattooed across his bare, bandolier-festooned chest). All I know is that you haven’t paid a traffic fine recently, or you’d have noticed that the checks are made payable to the State of Oregon, not the City of Portland.

Granted, some of that money is eventually returned to local governments. The amount refunded, however, varies by offense, jurisdiction, phase of the moon, etc., in accordance with a byzantine accounting system that was probably designed specifically to defeat sensible-sounding schemes like yours. To add insult to injury, the presumptive fine for failure to display plates is actually only $115, cutting into your profits even further.

But look on the bright side: The cops aren’t ignoring your scam because they’re hopeless idiots. They’re ignoring it because it wouldn’t work! Though it’s widely believed that traffic fines are a cash cow for local governments, nationwide they account for less than 1% of state and local revenues. Throw in the cops’ salaries and some administrative overhead and it’s pretty much a wash.

Even if writing tickets were as lucrative as you suggest, Indignant, consider the opportunity costs. You can imagine gimlet-eyed budget directors arguing that the police should spend ALL their time writing revenue-generating traffic tickets instead of wasting resources on financial black holes like investigating murders and arson. As soon as you adopted such a plan, though, you’d have short-sighted victims’ rights groups all over you. Where is the vision?

No matter. As it happens, the Portland Bureau of Transportation just announced that vehicles with no visible identifiers can now be towed without notice. That’s good news for both of us: Your worries about plateless scofflaws get addressed, and I get a little actual news to pad out my column—always handy when the dick jokes start to, um, peter out.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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