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Were indigency, amnesty programs for Driver Responsibility Surcharge secretly "dropped"?

The Dallas News today has a story on the Driver Responsibility Surcharge program that worrisomely neglects recent board-level activities on the subject at the Public Safety Commission in the last six months. Here's a substantial excerpt: The Texas Driver Responsibility Program was designed to assess large additional fines ? into the thousands of dollars apiece ? to discourage certain offenses, such as drunken driving, and generate money for trauma care and highway construction. ...And while the Legislature may give some relief to lower-income drivers in two years, a leading critic said the program remains a modern-day "debtors prison" for a large number of Texans. An estimated one in nine arrest warrants in Austin, El Paso and other cities are being issued because of the surcharge program...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 31, 2010 (boomark / email).