Bill would eliminate driver’s license suspensions or revocations for unpaid debts
Photo | Courtesy of Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Massachusetts State House
Since she fell victim to identity theft and someone else racked up E-Z Pass charges in her name, Sandra Tavares has been unable to pay the debt and as a result hasn’t been able to get her license renewed since last December.
Tavares, of Quincy, at the time had just started working a second job to deal with an unanticipated rent increase — one she’s had to walk to during late hours of the night, since it doesn’t connect to public transit and she’s not legally allowed to drive, though she has a car and actively pays for car insurance.
While she’s been attempting to settle her debt in other states, she said she’s had no luck in Massachusetts.
"When I called Massachusetts to say, ‘Hey, can I now use my license?’ I was told, ‘No, you owe more money’ that I was never told about, and they can’t tell me from where or why or how,” she told lawmakers Tuesday, recalling being on hold for eight hours the last time she tried to contact the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Massachusetts laws require the RMV to suspend driver's licenses for non-payment of a variety of fees, such as E-Z Pass debt or unpaid traffic tickets. Legal advocates and lawmakers argued Tuesday before the Joint Committee on Transportation that this policy can place drivers, especially those who are low-income, into a compounding debt cycle.
Bills from Rep. Brandy Fluker-Reid and Sen. Julian Cyr (H 3662, S 2368) would eliminate license suspension or revocation based solely upon unpaid debts, like non-payment of vehicle excise taxes, state taxes and Department of Transportation fines.
"This has been an incredibly frustrating experience. It impacts my ability to pick up extra shifts at my second job, which I desperately need so that I can make my rent. I still have to borrow money to make my rent every single month, which is pretty pathetic when I'm working almost 80 hours a week," Tavares continued, adding that she now has to pay for ride shares in order to do things like care for her step children and go grocery shopping.
Cyr said Tuesday that 70% of Massachusetts residents rely on driving to get to work. The proposal would also direct the RMV to send people electronic reminders of payments and give individuals the ability to demonstrate financial hardship to get fees reduced or waived. Neither advocates nor lawmakers Tuesday could point to opposition to the idea, though lawmakers asked about it multiple times.
"Every year since 2020 alone, nearly three million licenses have been marked for non renewal by the Registry of Motor Vehicles for an unpaid debt with fines ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, with no possibility of creating a payment plan," Colin Harnsgate, an assistant attorney general in the Consumer Protection Division of the attorney general's office, said Tuesday.
He continued, "Workers with outstanding assessments are caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to legally drive to work and thus unable to consistently earn income to pay off their debts. These drivers are lurched into a perpetual cycle of debt that harms working people, reinforces economic hardship and really does little to uphold public safety."
Debts can steadily increase for numerous reasons, like missed pieces of mail, serious medical conditions, identity theft or poverty. Driving with a suspended license or registration accounts for more than 20,000 cases a year, according to Diana Williams, legislative policy counsel for the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
"For people living paycheck to paycheck, this policy turns poverty into a crime," Williams said. "When someone loses their licenses due to unpaid debt, they face an impossible choice: stop driving and risk losing their job and ability to get around, or keep driving and risk arrest. A civil fine can quickly spiral into a criminal record."
Fluker-Reid said over the course of history under this policy, with the collection of E-ZPass fines in particular, only one person is known to have gotten their license back.
"That also signals a problem, that even when someone is able to pay the thousands of dollars, in some cases upwards of $9,000 of fees that started at 25, 50 bucks, only one person has successfully gotten their license back. And we still don't know exactly how they did it," Fluker-Reid said.
The policy has a disproportionate impact on Black, Brown and low-income communities, the Boston Democrat added, tying the issue to existing economic concerns resulting from uncertainty in federal funding for safety net programs.
"When we know that we're not having the federal dollars for the safety net [programs] that we want to have for low-income communities, we have to make sure that folks are able to work," Fluker-Reid continued.
Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have eliminated or significantly reduced debt-based license restrictions without seeing adverse effects on collection, according to Harnsgate.
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