Legislative scrutiny increases on traffic-fine revenue

By: Mark Bowes; Richmond-Times Dispatch - February 5, 2012

Hopewell's so-called million-dollar mile is now pushing the $2 million mark in annual revenue for the cash-strapped city of smokestacks.

A traffic-enforcement program that runs 14 hours a day, seven days a week along a 1- to 2-mile section of Interstate 295 through the city has drawn the attention — and in some cases, ire — of some Virginia legislators and officials within the Virginia State Police.

The Hopewell Sheriff's Office, whose primary function is to provide courtroom security and serve civil-process papers, has carved out a special unit — complete with its own dispatching system — to focus solely on catching motorists who exceed the 70 mph speed limit as they pass briefly through Hopewell.

Eleven sheriff's deputies, all but one of whom are part time, wrote 14,778 tickets in 2011 with $2,056,387 in assessed fines, with more than $1.6 million of that being collected, the Sheriff's Office said. Seventy-five percent of those cited were from out of state.

The program, which Sheriff Greg Anderson started as a one-officer operation a year after he took office in 2006, has expanded over the past five years in personnel and revenue generated for the city.

The $26,665 in fines assessed in 2007 grew fivefold to $160,646 in 2008, tripled to $634,655 in 2009, nearly doubled to $1.1 million in 2010 and passed the $2 million mark last year.

"It's not about the money to me," Anderson said forcefully and repeatedly during a recent interview. The purpose, the sheriff said, is to slow people down and save lives.

"I'm actually corny enough to think that I can send a message in that (section of I-295) that might resonate and have an impact on people for a long stretch of that highway," he said.

The cash pouring into city coffers as a result of the fines, Anderson explained, "is the punishment piece" for breaking the law, and nothing more.

"It's astonishing to me that these people still come blowing through there at these high rates of speed," added Anderson, who takes umbrage at the suggestion that the sums being collected appear excessive.

"Is there a cutoff?" he said pointedly.

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Anderson's program, and a few others like it across the state that have generated millions of dollars in revenue, has come under increasing scrutiny from the Virginia General Assembly. Several legislators say the programs are little more than speed traps that have developed into tidy revenue streams for localities.

"I don't dispute the fact that they are enforcing the law," said state Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, who introduced legislation that would strip the ability of localities to collect traffic-fine revenue on interstates. "But I have to question the pure intensity of the way they go about it."

Watkins added: "When you got somebody out there developing a revenue stream out of a process of law enforcement, you have to question whether it's all being appropriately applied" and whether justice is being served.

Watkins' bill died Jan. 18 on a 11-4 vote in the Senate Courts of Justice Committee, as did a companion bill introduced by Del. Betsy Carr, D-Richmond, in the House of Delegates. The latter was passed by indefinitely on Jan. 25.

Carr a quiet force in politics

Published: June 11, 2009

By Michael Paul Williams

Betsy Carr might be described as the accidental politician.

She likely wouldn’t have landed on the Richmond School Board if then-5th District representative Stephen B. Johnson hadn’t been caught at Richmond International Airport with three marijuana joints in his luggage.

Carr was selected to fill Johnson’s term after his resignation in March 2006, and won election outright the following November. Two years later, she trounced opponent Otis Mallory.

It was a startling show of political muscle by a white candidate in a majority-black district. And now, after her win in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Carr is well-positioned to become the 69th District representative in the House of Delegates.

She will face Republican Ernesto Sampson in November to represent a majority-black district that had been held by Democrat Franklin P. Hall for 33 years.

Carr has accomplished this with a bare minimum of words, fanfare and controversy.

“I don’t talk a lot,” she said yesterday at George Wythe High School’s graduation. “I just listen and respond and try to get people together to work and get things done. I think people appreciate that.”

Her rector at the church where she conducts community outreach certainly does.

“She is an inspiration to me and my ministry and my service and what I do, how I live,” said the Rev. D. Wallace Adams-Riley, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. “She is such a compassionate person, a faithful person, dedicated to social justice, to serving and caring for all God’s children.”

Not everyone is a fan.

“Miss Carr is to be congratulated for running an exceptional campaign,” said 5th District Councilman E. Martin Jewell. But he said Carr “is backed by corporate money that tells the whole story” of whose interests she is advancing — namely, the powerful business community.

Jewell backed Antione Green, the president of the Richmond Crusade for Voters, in the primary. He expressed disappointment that some prominent black politicians — Mayor Dwight C. Jones, state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III and state Sen. A. Donald McEachin — threw their weight behind corporate lawyer Carlos Brown.

Carr said Brown was the corporate community’s choice. “I think he outraised me and outspent me two times,” she said. During the filing period that ended May 27, Carr received $21,100 in itemized contributions and Brown $43,650, according to campaign finance reports.

The Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell of Richmond Hill knows Carr through their work with The Micah Initiative, a partnership between local faith communities and the Richmond Public Schools. He called her “a deeply concerned citizen who has done her homework in her own district . . . and has a significant track record working for public education in our city.

“She in no way represents a particular corporate interest, and her election is in no way based on money,” Campbell said. “Her support has always crossed racial lines, and her opposition has always crossed racial lines.”

Such is the makings of a political success story that defies convention. “This was not on my horizon,” said Carr, 62. But for this quiet force, the sky appears to be the limit.