All I wanted was to visit my dying father. Now I owe Massachusetts $10,000.

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/09/10/all-i-wanted-was-to-visit-my-dying-father-now-i-owe-massachusetts-10000/

I've been an E-ZPass customer since I got my driver's license in 2004. I attach the device to my windshield so I can cruise through highway toll booths without rummaging for change. That benefit was especially important several months ago when my father was dying of cancer and I regularly drove between Massachusetts and New Hampshire to visit him. With those trips — along with driving to work, running errands, and other daily outings –I drove through 153 toll booths over five months. At about $1.75 per toll, I expected E-ZPass would deduct the fees from my bank account automatically, as it typically does. Instead, the state of Massachusetts slapped me with $10,000 in fines.

I'm a champion of local government and deeply appreciate the rules and regulations that manage our system. I even received a master's degree in political science last month from Northeastern University. But my experience navigating the Massachusetts Department of Transportation has revealed the inside of a broken and unjust system. This is about more than the standard aggravations of bureaucracy. This agency is robbing its customers, seeking to fund its $1.8 billion budget with outrageous fines and obstructionist policies. Massachusetts DOT officials claim that toll cheats have racked up $23 million in unpaid fines, but my story shows that much of that debt is simply a result of the department's own greed.

In October 2013, the credit card number attached to my E-ZPass account was changed, possibly by a glitch, a hacker or some other unexpected problem. I was never notified. Unaware of the delinquent account, my sister and I drove to work as usual, and made frequent trips back and forth to our parents' home. Admittedly, I must have driven through some tolls that flashed a yellow alert light, but because I assumed there was no problem, I wasn't looking for them. Other high-speed tolls don't have a warning light.  Eventually, on March 18, I went to the Registry of Motor Vehicles to find out why I had a ticket on my windshield saying my registration had expired. The woman at the counter printed out 15 pages of my E-ZPass violations. I thought it must be a mistake.

E-ZPass claimed that each time I had driven through a toll booth, it had sent me three letters warning of the violation – 450 letters total. But the letters were sent to an old address, one that I had removed from my E-ZPass account in September 2013 when I moved. I had updated my address on file for voter registration, too. It wasn't obvious that I needed to alert the Registry of Motor Vehicles, as well, and that's the address E-ZPass used for the notices. Even though I had informed the U.S. Postal Service of my move, no letters were forwarded to me from the Massachusetts DOT. Actually, the agency had received some returned letters, but still, it never sent me an e-mail about the violations or looked for some alternate way to reach me. Eventually, enough time passed that I owed the maximum penalty — $90 per toll.

I went to an appeal hearing in April, confident that the particulars of my situation would lead to a reasonable resolution. Clearly, asking a graduate student — or anyone — to pay $10,000 in fines for highway tolls is an unjust and cruel punishment. The hearing officiant reduced my fines from nearly $10,000 to $4,560. I told her that, as a low-income student, a lump sum payment wasn't an option and her suggestion that I take out an additional student loan to pay back the state simply wasn't feasible. Ultimately, she allowed me to arrange a payment plan: As long as I made a payment in any amount each month towards my balance, I would not incur additional penalties.

Though I still couldn't comprehend how I would mount that financial burden, I accepted responsibility. I was finishing school and just starting a new job, so in June and July I made monthly payments of $2. But when I called to make my third monthly payment, the E-ZPass representative dealt me another unexpected blow. He asked if I really thought that, at $2 per month, I'd be able to pay off my balance in time to re-register my car. It was the first time I had been told that, although I had arranged a payment plan, I was still being penalized by not being able to register a car in Massachusetts.

The next time I called, I was told that my payment agreement had been rescinded. I would have to pay $10,000 in full and in person at the RMV. There was no explanation.

Certainly, I made mistakes. I wasn't monitoring my account closely to make sure E-ZPass tolls were being deducted, and I wasn't aware that I had to change my address with the RMV in addition to E-ZPass. And as I passed through certain toll booths at 25 miles per hour, I missed the yellow light that flashed. These are mistakes that I own up to and should pay for. But they are unintentional oversights, the kinds we all make when life gets busy and stressful. Just $300 in unpaid tolls does not justify a debt equal to that of a college education. There are felonies that command lesser punishments.

As soon as I found out about my mistakes, I committed to doing what I could to make up for them. I'm sure there are many other law-abiding citizens just like me, facing several thousands of dollars in fines for a couple hundred in tolls. Our government is preventing us from doing what's right by burdening us with exorbitant punishments. Yes, there should be measures in place to dissuade people from gaming the system. But in this case, the system is gaming the people. The state needs to reform its policies and stop balancing its budget on the backs of the citizens of the Commonwealth.

[Pat K]

He still don't get it.

[Jim Johnson]

"I'm a champion of local government and deeply appreciate the rules and regulations that manage our system."

Well?  Pay up and shut up.

[WithoutAPaddle]

I think I owe Maryland MVA a lot of money.  I registered a vehicle there about a decade ago, and gave them a mailing address as well as a physical address, which was the condominium I was living in.

Maryland has or had some staggered vehicle pollution inspection program, and I guess that once very two years, they schedule an inspection but for some reason, they are required to send the notice to the registrant's physical address rather than to his mailing address.

The notices direct the postman to return them to the MVA if they have not been retrieved from the customer's mailbox within something like 15 days.  Since I never deliberately had anything sent there, I would only clear the junk mail out of that box, which is part of an in-wall bank of boxes, maybe once a month or thereabouts, and since I have never given out that address for receipt of mail, even if a notice was in there among the junk flyers, I likely wouldn't have seen it.

Registrations in Maryland are renewed every two years, and when I went to renew it, I was told that I would have to pay about $1,500 in fines and penalties for presumptively operating a vehicle that was not certified for pollution reduction equipment compliance.  I think there was also another fine for never having returned the license plates from another Maryland vehicle I had junked.  I think that a driver is presumed to be continuing to operate vehicles that he has not renewed the registrations for.  I might have had to prove I junked that vehicle, but again, it was a long time ago and I really don't remember. Does New Hampshire make you turn in the plates that are not renewed?  When I started driving in the early 1970s, they used to issue us new plates every year, so such laws didn't exist when I passed my driver's test.

Somehow, the clerk I was speaking to made maybe half of the fines and penalties go away.  I actually used to know how exactly she did it, but I no longer remember.  The amount I had remaining was affordable, but since my plates on this vehicle hadn't yet expired, I didn't pay the amount at that time.

After that, I talked to a couple of lifelong Maryland residents, and they told me that because I had an older vehicle, there were other exceptions and waivers that I was eligible for and that I might get the whole penalty down to a couple of hundred dollars, but since I was maintaining residences in two states at the time, I just registered that vehicle at the other residence, where I already had one vehicle registered.

I wouldn't think of Massachusetts as a state that screws its motorists.  When I lived there, the non-moving violations were so easy to negotiate downward that they used to bump them down even if you didn't ask, just so they wouldn't be taking advantage of the unsophisticated.

[Tom Sawyer]

Posted my comment...

It's all a racket.

Could you imagine a commercial entity treating their customers the way governments do. Unresponsive, bureaucratic, exploitive.

Of course as a political science major it is all part of your education in the way governments really work. The comments here are also an education in how the serfs love to see other serfs punished.

[Tom Sawyer]

I think I owe Maryland MVA a lot of money.

Don't get me going on the bitches at the Glen Burnie DMV...  They were famous for their shitty attitudes and their enjoyment of screwing with people.

I had a car that I wanted to get a temporary tag so I could legally let people test drive it, so I could sell it. She told me they didn't have temp tags and that I would have to register and pay over 600 bucks tax and fees. I told her that was silly because that was more than the fine for illegally driving the car. She said "Well you HAVE to do it!" I said "Well you better start making your call to the cops, because I'm walking out to drive it home right now."  She was yelling at me as I laughed walking out the door.

[WithoutAPaddle]

Yeah, I had some nutty other experiences with Maryland's MVA as well.  I had wanted a temporary tag just to bring a vehicle from where it was to the inspection station, and they made it really complicated.  I think I wanted to get a preliminary inspection, just to make sure that there wasn't some hidden problem that would cost more than the vehicle was worth to fix.  I think that one obstacle was that only the owner of the vehicle can get that kind of plate, but I wouldn't have yet bought it.  Another impediment they have to registration is that I think that a person cannot register a vehicle until after it is inspected, whereas in New Hampshire, you can't get it inspected until after it is registered.

[Russell Kanning]

I would even think that ezpass is kinda private .... but with most of the bad features of the government
ya can you imagine a normal business fining you $10000?
I have ezpass through Ipass in Illinois. I think I get email updates if something is happening.
There is this crazy situation down in Houston. If you want to ride around on the outer loop you have to have like 2 or 3 different passes. Part of it is free. 2 of the parts are pass only no cash.
Any sane person would want us trucks getting out of the inner city and the inner loop .... but nope. I would have to get one of the 3 texas passes and a Harris county pass to drive there. We have finally given up and drive on the inner loop. When I deliver to a walmart right on the turnpike I just keep driving on the huge frontage road. The lights are better than the tolls.

[KBCraig]

About two months ago I got a bill from the North Texas Tollway Authority. If you don't have a pass, they just photo your plate and send you the bill. For two trips on the Dallas central expressway, my total was something like $3.40.

I got the bill in June or July 2014. The trips were in December 2012 and January 2013.

[Russell Kanning]

very strange
I like the toll roads they are building in the middle of nowhere Texas .... at least they are doing it while it is farmland instead of tear up buildings and such.

and it only took them $20 to send you that bill