David Voight wanted to talk to someone at the Illinois Tollway Authority about a pile of tickets he thought were issued by mistake. He left phone messages, he wrote letters. Nobody at the tollway ever responded, he says.
Voight could have visited the tollway’s headquarters in Downers Grove, like thousands of others who want to challenge their tickets. But he was 400 miles away in St. Paul, Minn. — where he happens to be a deputy to Atty. Gen. Lori Swanson. He was assigned to deal with dozens of complaints from Minnesota residents who’d gotten tickets for allegedly blowing past tollbooths in Illinois without paying.
The drivers protested that they didn’t own the car in question, or they didn’t own it at the time of the alleged offense, or even that they’d never been to Chicago. They’d tried to straighten things out by dealing with the tollway, but their appeals were ignored or denied, they told Voight.
Some were told they’d have to come to Downers Grove to contest the ticket; even more incredibly, some of them did. Others gave up and paid the tickets, including hefty penalties. You might, too, if a collection agency was threatening to have your driver’s license suspended and the tollway was blowing you off.
Dozens of others, though, filed complaints with Swanson’s office. But Voight couldn’t get anywhere, either. So on Thursday, Swanson sent a letter — including more than 70 pages of documentation — to Gov. Pat Quinn, acting Tollway Director Michael King and tollway Inspector General Tracy Smith. To make sure they got the message, she helpfully copied it to the media.
The letter asked the tollway to stop mailing tickets to Minnesotans until it can ensure that its system relies on vehicle registration data that is up-to-date, to rescind the tickets issued to Minnesotans who can show they didn’t commit the violation, and to name a liaison to work with her office on behalf of Minnesotans. She asked it to instruct its collection agency to lay off those bogus threats about getting Minnesotans’ licenses suspended.
“It is unfair for the tollway to place the burden on Minnesota citizens to correct the errors of a faulty system,” she said. It’s the tollway’s responsibility, she said, to make sure tickets “are properly issued to the correct owner in the first place.” Hear, hear. And that goes for Chicago’s write-tickets-now, fix-the-meters-later parking contractor, too.
The Minnesota complaints sound a lot like the things Rep. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) has been hearing from his Downstate constituents. Playing catch-up after going 13 months without mailing any tickets, the tollway was trying to clear a 1.6 million ticket backlog by sending up to 10,000 a week. Naturally, the hot line was jammed.
We have no sympathy for the scofflaws who were shocked to learn the tollway was indeed watching as they breezed past the tollgates over and over. Likewise for those who claim their I-PASS transponders must have been broken or that someone should have told them their credit cards expired. But the tollway couldn’t handle all the calls, and drivers with legitimate appeals were lost in the chaos. Rose says he couldn’t get the tollway to return his calls, either.
So he filed a bill to force the tollway to clean up its act: Violation notices would have to be mailed in a timely fashion or they’d be thrown out. Documentation of the alleged infraction, including photos, would be posted online. Appeals could be filed online.
“I did it to get their attention,” Rose says, and it worked. King took the proposal to the tollway board, which agreed to adopt the rules pronto, and Rose tabled the bill. In his seven years in Springfield, Rose says he’s never had a more satisfying encounter with a bureaucrat. Maybe there’s hope for the tollway.
The new rules can only fix things going forward, though. And the tollway’s “spring cleaning” program, which gives drivers a $50 break on their delinquent tickets, is no bargain if you didn’t commit the crime. Both Rose and Swanson say they’re still getting such complaints. We’d like to see the tollway do something for those folks — and not just the ones from Minnesota.
