Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Open Letter to State's Attorney Bianchi

Dear Mr. Bianchi,

I am writing to call your attention to an unfair and expensive procedure, over which I understand your office might be able to exert some influence.

When the McHenry County Conservation District issues a ticket to a person found in an MCCD park after-hours, the ticket requires that person to appear before a judge, if he does not pay the $75.00 to MCCD within about 7-10 days.

A Guilty plea at the first court appearance results in an exorbitant amount of court costs and fees. On Monday the sum of $111.00 was assessed on top of the $75.00 fine.

The recipient of the ticket inquired before the court date about paying the $75.00 at the Payment Window of the courthouse and was told payment would not be accepted and that a court appearance was required.

Without disrespect to the court or to the judicial process, it seems reasonable to allow a first offender to pay the $75.00 before the court date. Perhaps a small "service fee" ($10.00?) could be added to pay for a clerk's time to accept payment, and probably few people would argue with that, understanding that they would be saving $100.00.

May I invite you to consider my request that the procedure for such petty offenses be changed to allow payment at the courthouse, in person or by mail, before a court date by those persons who intend not to contest the citation?

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Gus Philpott

2 comments:

M.U.G. said...

Nice letter but you should have left out this sentence: "Perhaps a small "service fee" ($10.00?) could be added to pay for a clerk's time to accept payment, and probably few people would argue with that, understanding that they would be saving $100.00." Why, because that taking of the fine at the window is part of the clerks job. Seems everyone wants 'fee's' just to do the job they were hired to do.

Notawannabee said...

MUG. Did you know that some of the towns have figured out a way to avoid the County altogether? They issue a local ticket that never gets reported to the SOS. The town keeps the entire fine. That reeks of using the police as revenue wardens.

Much of the county clerk’s budget is based upon fees generated by the courts. The part I most disagree with is that if you get stopped for waht would be otherwise a moving violation, it is not reported to the SOS. Repeat offenders never get reported to the State.

Circuit Clerk Kathy Keefe probably knows too well about these local tickets.