The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors thinks it may have solved its photo-radar problem. Sorry, they're not getting rid of the damn things, they're just going to charge you more if you ignore the ticket, as many often do.
After a brief hearing this morning, the board voted to approve an additional $20 court fee for those who ignore citations and have to go to court.
Supervisors Max Wilson, Mary Rose Wilcox, and Fulton Brock approved the measure, while Supervisor Stapley recused himself, and Andrew Kunasek was not at the meeting.
A call to Stapley's office to try and find out why the supervisor recused himself was not returned this afternoon.
The fee is in response to justice courts being swamped with photo-radar cases for people who flat out ignored citations they received in the mail.
Justice of the Peace John Ore spoke in favor of the fee, saying the tickets are overwhelming the courts.
"We're out of ideas, we're out of resources... The work load is monumental," 92.3 (KTAR) reports Ore as saying at the hearing.
Aww, we wouldn't want our public officials working too hard, now would we?
According to Ore, the courts are seeing up to 14,000 photo-radar cases each month, and there could be as many as 600,000 speed cases just this year.
Here's the good news -- they still have to find you.
We encourage people to always obey the law, but it should be pointed out that if you do choose to ignore a photo-radar ticket and not mail in the fine or go to court, the fee doesn't apply to you until the courts send a process-server to track you down and hand you an appearance notice in person. With 14,000 cases a month -- good luck.
