Bill simplifies N.M. ticketing process

SANTA FE – Speeders and other traffic scofflaws who now face a roadside dilemma about whether to pay a ticket or fight it in court would get a breather under a bill passed by the Legislature.

Lawmakers were unanimous during the recent session in approving legislation that changes the sometimes-confusing traffic citation process in New Mexico.

Senate Bill 131 has gone to Gov. Susana Martinez, who has until April 5 to sign or veto legislation passed in the last three days of the 60-day session that ended Saturday.

Under the proposed change, all citations would be sent to courts, rather than the current practice of having some sent to the Motor Vehicle Division.

Now, a motorist who’s stopped for speeding must decide on the spot whether to plead guilty and be issued a ticket payable to the MVD, or go to magistrate court or Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court to fight it.

Confusion arises when motorists change their minds later, says Arthur Pepin, , director of the Administrative Office of the Courts.

If someone initially opts to pay a ticket and then decides to go to court instead, the court has no record of the offense because it went to MVD.

“The court says, ‘We have no idea who you are,’ ” Pepin said Tuesday.

If someone who initially opts to go to court decides instead to pay the ticket and mails the money off to MVD, “they never heard of you, because the ticket went to court,” Pepin said.

Worse yet, the court could issue warrants for failure to appear, subjecting motorists to arrest the next time they’re stopped, he said.

Pepin said the courts and MVD get dozens of calls each week from people trying to straighten out such situations.

“We’re the only state that has a system that works in this bifurcated way,” he said.

The courts currently process about 100,000 citations annually and the MVD roughly the same number, according to Pepin. MVD officials could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Under the legislation, a police officer would issue a uniform traffic citation, advise the driver of the option to either pay or appear in court, and forward the citation to the court within three days.

The new system would begin on July 1, 2014, to give the court system time to gear up for it with new equipment and additional staff to administer and process citations.

The bill includes a one-time appropriation of $500,000. And it provides that a magistrate court operations fee of $4 on convicted defendants that is supposed to expire in 2014 would instead be shifted to a fund to administer the new system.

The legislation also contains a provision that has been of concern to the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government. It says the AOC must not publish on the online court records database “the records of a defendant charged with only a penalty assessment if the case is closed.”

Lawmakers who supported the provision said it would be too expensive for the underfunded magistrate courts to put online the minor traffic offenses that motorists pay fines for and don’t dispute in court.

The legislation specifies that those records are subject to disclosure under the Inspection of Public Records Act.

But FOG Executive Director Gwyneth Doland said it’s in the public interest to have such information more readily available.

“When a parent wants to check on a driving record of potential baby sitter, she is not going to file an IPRA request. But she would look at a public website to see if the baby sitter is a safe driver,” Doland said.
— This article appeared on page C01 of the Albuquerque Journal