Skipping traffic court could cost you $250 instead of a
warrant
Morgan Hill – If you try to skip court for that traffic ticket, the county is ready to hit you where it hurts: your pocketbook.
Once upon a time, Santa Clara County issued warrants to no-shows at traffic court. Unfortunately, those piddling warrants didn’t get much attention, as police prioritized nabbing violent or destructive offenders over stop-sign scofflaws. This July, however, the county adopted a new system, serving traffic delinquents with an extra $250 bill, instead of a warrant.
“On your run-of-the-mill traffic tickets, we’ve stopped issuing warrants,” said Kari Torre, chief executive officer of Santa Clara County Superior Court. “Now there’s a less costly, more effective way of getting the matter resolved.”
It’s called civil assessment, and county officials say it could make you think twice before you skip your court date. Some California counties began using the process as early as 1994, but Santa Clara County signed on late, hampered by an outdated computer system.
Here’s how it works: If you commit traffic violation, and then skip court, you’ll be fined in absentia an amount equal to your original bail. If you don’t pay those fines within 10 days, the court imposes an additional $250 to $300 fine, called a civil assessment. If you fail to pay that, a collections agency takes over with an impressive arsenal of tools.
Collection agencies can garnish wages and use tax interception among other methods to get the money they’re owed, Torre said.
“Previously, the only recourse we had was to let [a delinquent traffic ticket] go to a warrant, and that created problems,” said Carl Schulhof, Public Information Officer of Santa Clara Superior Court. “There were a lot of warrants issued in small amounts of money, and it was difficult for police agencies, which lacked resources to be able to serve those warrants.”
More than 170,000 traffic citation warrants sat gathering dust in Santa Clara County, before the cases were referred to civil assessment this year, said Torre. Police couldn’t drop everything to track down red-light runners – and judges didn’t care to fill California’s crowded jails with traffic violators.
Now, more people are showing up to traffic court, said Torre. Though she couldn’t provide numbers, no-shows are dwindling in county courts, she said.
At $250 a pop, a civil assessment sounds like serious cash. But the fines won’t pour more money into county coffers. The money goes into a trial court trust fund to keep courts running like clockwork.
Before 2005, such funds were considered “undesignated revenue,” said manager Ruben Gomez, the manager of the Finance Division in the Administrative Office of the Courts. A state bill redirected the cash to trial court trust funds, compensating counties for the cash they’d lose. Because Santa Clara County didn’t start the program until this year, the state opted to compensate them differently: the county will pay $2.5 million less to the state each year, for an indefinite amount of time.
Overall, said Gomez, that means civil assessments aren’t bringing the county much money – but aren’t costing it much, either.
Not every offense can go to civil assessment: juvenile cases, unsigned citations, some types of speeding violations and any mandatory court appearance citation gets dealt a warrant if the accused skips court, said Melinda Fort, facility manager of the Palo Alto courthouse.
“That’s hundreds” of warrants, said Schulhof, “where in the past, we had thousands.”
But paying a fine, instead of facing arrest, won’t clear your name at the Department of Motor Vehicles, said Fort.
“You can get points on your license, either way,” she said, “because they assess points on their own criteria. For them, a conviction is a conviction.”
Emily Alpert covers public safety issues for The Dispatch. She can be reached at 847-7158, or at ea*****@gi************.com.
