Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Eroding citizen trust

Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 | 8:56 a.m.

THE LETTER told the same story. The only difference was that this last one was e-mailed, which is another story altogether and for another day.

Today's column focuses on what the writer called legalized extortion, which is an impassioned description about a system -- what happens from the time you get a ticket --- that has been "broke and not yet fixed." The writer's name is unimportant since most of us already know half a dozen similar stories because it has happened to people we know and, in many cases, to a person we know very well.

This fellow was stopped by a policeman who, at the end of the day, wrote only a ticket for not having valid proof of insurance. The letter writer didn't give the reason for the initial traffic stop nor did he admit that there was one. So let's assume the policeman did his job and, not getting the appropriate inusrance card, wrote the ticket. That ticket, from past personal experience, comes with the advice that the presentation of the valid insurance card to the authorities will void most of the pain of the experience.

Not quite true. In this case, the fellow gets his insurance cards replaced -- the reason for the misplaced proof was a bit bizarre in that the cards were sent to an ex-wife since her name was first on the address list and, one can only assume, she wasn't in the mood to forward them on -- and takes them down to the ticket-paying place.

After taking considerable time off from work or other pleasurable pursuits to wait in line, he is informed that his ticket is "not yet in the sytsem" and there is nothing that can be done until the computer gets the bits of information needed to perform the voiding function. That's understandable -- our citizen was more efficient in performing his duty than our government was in carrying out its responsibilities. Nothing new there but no real harm done. He is handed a self-addressed envelope in which he was to place his proof of insurance tagged to the citation number and all would be well. Right?

Well, not quite so fast. You forgot the part about the inevitable snafu and the bench warrant. That's right, here's a guy who did everything he was supposed to do, except for an untimely divorce from a woman who either doesn't open her mail or doesn't forward it to the right person, and the next thing he hears is that there will be a bench warrant for his arrest for failing to pay the fine for the ticket he got that nobody at City Hall knew about when he went down to pay it! Sound familiar?

So no problem. This guy gets up very early and manages to be the second person in line at 6:30 a.m. so he can set matters straight. The phone number they give you doesn't help because he waited on hold for 45 minutes with no help in sight the day before. I have heard about people with even more patience but similar results.

The person behind the desk is also very helpful, just unable to give the guy the help he needs. Instead, our victim is told the only way he can avoid being arrested -- there is no appeal, no supervisor, no one else with any abillity to fix the problem -- is to pay a $50 fine to remove the bench warrant. So what does he do?

He succumbs to the pressure of getting up too early, spending too much time away from work, too long waiting on hold on the phone and aggravating himself trying to figuire out why his ex didn't forward the insurance card so he never would have had this problem in the first place. He pays the $50.

Now he does the only thing a person frustrated with the system can do. He vents, and yours truly gets to read all about it. Thankfully.

This is just one more case of a citizen doing everything right and a number of public servants "just doing their job." And yet the whole thing gets botched up and a person who believes -- in government, in taxes, in the common good, in helping his neighbor and every other good thing we are supposed to believe in as good citizens -- gets shafted.

Something is broken and it still ain't fixed. And whether it is this ticket saga, which is repeated daily, or some other way in which the system manages to deflate a citizen's belief in his government's ability to do the simple things in life, the result is the same. And we can't afford to keep losing the people's respect one person at a time.

Years ago there was a funny story about this kind of problem. The punch line was "pay the two dollars." Today the cost is a lot higher. Whether it is in the taking time off from work or from family, the payment of an extorted $50, the real threat of a bench warrant and possible jail time or some other punitive effort to make the sytem work better, the fact is it is still not even working well.

If this man's story were an isolated case, then the cost in the disruption to his life would be a small price for the rest of us to pay for a system that works, mostly. But that is not the case. And in this world in which faith in government seems to be waning at a much faster than normal pace -- in no small measure because of the constant carping from the talk radio and talk television hosts -- that very government under attack should not aid in that effort.

Government is supposed to be of, by and for the people. Let's try to remember that when a fellow wants to take care of his obligations.