Michigan House Speaker Tom Leonard says the time has come to stop penalizing people with extra driver responsibility fees for not paying tickets or other infractions. His chamber has legislation to completely forgive the debt owed by thousands.
“We’ve got over 300,000 people who cannot lawfully obtain a driver’s license,” notes Leonard. “I personally witnessed this with hundreds of people when I was a prosecutor in Genesee County, and I believe we need to forgive these fees, get these people their licenses back, and get them back in the workforce.”
The Senate passed a bill Thursday that forgives fees that are six-years old or older, but the rest of them would still be collected. Leonard says the fees primarly hurt the working poor. They were put in place to try to balance the budget in 2003.
