A Cook County judge on Wednesday ended the long-standing–and lucrative–practice of issuing “alternative” traffic citations, or “P-tickets,” leaving suburban officials worried about lost revenue as they face a potentially whopping fine.
In outlawing the controversial tickets–issued mostly for minor traffic violations by Schaumburg, Hanover Park, McCook, Kenilworth and Northfield–Circuit Judge Thomas Durkin sided with Secretary of State George Ryan, whose office filed the suit challenging the practice.
Durkin said that the issuance of P-tickets, which are not reported to the state and do not appear on the offender’s driving record, hinders the secretary of state’s ability to take action against bad drivers.
Durkin noted that a person driving in “the defendant municipalities could be ticketed numerous times” without being reported.
Durkin set an Aug. 27 court date to discuss possible fines as well as address the issue of a permanent injunction. The suit asks that the municipalities be fined as much as $25,000 for each P-ticket issued.
Durkin’s decision effectively ends in Cook County a controversial practice that has been a moneymaker for communities around the state. Schaumburg, one of approximately 60 communities statewide that issues P-tickets, pulled in $616,000 last year from the program.
But P-tickets, so named because they allow the offender to avoid a “point” on his or her traffic record, have also been the topic of study by an Illinois Supreme Court panel and a source of concern for the last two attorneys general, as well as Ryan.
Ryan, who brought the lawsuit last July, said he was “very pleased” with the outcome of the case.
“This means motorists who break the law in certain communities will not escape our attention simply because they pay a fine to a municipality,” Ryan said.
But suburban officials decried Durkin’s decision, saying the loss of P-tickets would tie up their police forces in court testifying on trivial traffic violations.
Jack Siegel, Schaumburg village attorney, also argued that money–not safety–motivated state officials to seek an end to P-tickets.
“The real issue is they feel they are losing some revenue,” Siegel said, outside Durkin’s courtroom.
Though officials in Schaumburg and Hanover Park said they would stop issuing the citations, officials of at least two other villages said they were undecided.
Allen Kaminski, chief of the Kenilworth Police Department, said the village attorney has not yet notified his department to stop issuing the tickets.
And Northfield attorney Everette Hill said officials there had not made a final decision.
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“We are disappointed (by the decision),” Hill said. “We thought we were complying with the law in what we were doing.”
Municipalities outside Cook County issuing P-tickets, however, said they planned to keep on writing the citations.
Michael Friesen, village manager of Lakewood, which issues P-tickets for moving violations, said his McHenry County village has no plans to stop now, despite the judge’s ruling in neighboring Cook County.
“This is a political issue at the state level, where the system works against municipalities trying to control their own destiny,” said Friesen.
State officials have long said that safety was the major reason for ending P-tickets.
In his lawsuit, Ryan charged that Schaumburg and Northfield allowed P-tickets to be issued for nearly 80 state offenses, including illegal transportation of alcohol, trying to beat an oncoming train and failure to bring a school bus to a full stop at a railroad crossing.
Kenilworth, according to Ryan’s office, allows P-tickets for 31 state violations, including exceeding the speed limit by more than 25 m.p.h.
But supporters of the tickets said they ease the burden on overcrowded courts as well as provide revenues for municipalities.
A driver receiving a P-ticket for a minor traffic violation, such as rolling through a stop sign, could settle the matter by simply paying a fine to the village issuing the ticket.
Fines usually ranged from $25 and $75 and tended to be less than regular state citations. In addition, drivers who got P-tickets didn’t have to appear in court.
That drivers receiving P-tickets were not reported to the state has been one of Ryan’s major criticisms.
“If we’re going to make the roads safer, we have to have an accurate record of who is breaking the law,” Ryan said.
But supporters counter that those motorists who are issued a standard citation and then receive court supervision also remain invisible to the secretary of state’s computer system.
“When we send people to court, everybody gets supervision for everything,” said Hill. “So we don’t see the point of taking our officers off the street and making them go to court. These (supervisions) have never been reported to the secretary of state.”