Editorial: More teeth needed in scofflaw penalty

Friday, Sept. 20, 2002 | 9:17 a.m.

In the private world of financial transactions, if you miss a payment you incur a penalty. Skip a car payment and you get a notice. Keep missing it and you lose your car. If you miss payments on your regular bills, your credit rating is affected, immediately. The penalties encourage prompt payment and prompt payments allow businesses to stay afloat. Everyone understands this arrangement and most people accept it as a fact of life. We support the Nevada Supreme Court as it pushes for this fact of life to bear more heavily on people who are fined by the courts.

A random sampling of the district courts in Washoe and Clark counties by legislative auditors shows that fines are being collected at a dismal 23 percent. Justice courts and municipal courts fared better, collecting at a rate of 81 percent. Currently, courts may order that people who haven't paid their fines be denied renewal of their driver's licenses. Partly because millions of dollars are at stake, at a time when the state is facing huge deficits, the Supreme Court wants the Legislature to add denial of vehicle registrations to the court's authority in imposing penalties on scofflaws.

The proposal makes sense. Licenses are renewed only every four years. That's a long time for a court order to linger. Registrations are every year. With this stronger penalty in place, people owing fines would have more respect for the court's authority and the pace of collections would very likely accelerate. Additionally, the system would be more fair to the people who do pay their fines.