While Las Vegas Sleeps…

There is probably a slicker, less eyebrow-raising name for what is going on between Nevada and a few other states, including, but probably not limited to, Utah. I was raised in an era and in a country that seems to be a different place in many respects, nowadays. There was a time when, for instance, if you had a ticket from some three horse town in another part of your own state, it was up to you and that jurisdiction to work out the payment. It was not going to affect you where you lived unless the ticket happened to have been state police. That was to protect citizens from small towns using speed traps as a way to raise local money at the expense of people traveling on roads that went through their town. In the past, the worst thing that could happen in that situation is that it might potentially affect your credit… eventually.

It wasn’t just the idea of police jurisdictions being separated. Taxes were recognized as being separated by interstate commerce laws - federal laws. Unless you lived in an metropolitan transit authority region, you paid sales tax for things in your county based on the local tax rate plus the state tax. If it was income taxes you paid federal and state (if there are state income taxes where you live) and if you lived in California it was California’s business to collect California’s state income taxes.. LA County was responsible for collecting it’s sales taxes, not Orange County’s, et cetera. Texas doesn’t threaten to revoke some sort of privilege for a citizen having not paid California’s income tax. There might be repercussions but it would be with that jurisdiction involved in the specific situation. Regions and jurisdictions exist for a reason. Lots of them, really. The advent of the Internet and online databases and interconnectivity, though, has made some police organizations get some bright ideas on how to collect their regressive taxes on silly traffic or paperwork sorts of fines. Nevada and Utah, and probably some other states nearby, are now sharing traffic ticket data, and your home state - in their technological gestapo pact - is agreeing to look into other states’ business (unpaid tickets) and arbitrarily penalizing you in a completely different governmental jurisdiction by suspending your driver’s license! (and quickly, too.)

I went on a ski trip to Colorado a little earlier in the Winter this year. Naturally, the most direct route to Colorado from Las Vegas is to drive through Utah. I made it eighty percent of the way through Mormon Country and was moving along pretty fast because the weather was great, it was daytime, and there was no one on the interstate with me. You know the rest of the story right off - a Utah state police cop was hiding in the bushes in Bumblefuck, Utah, waiting to catch a little discretionary tax revenue for his town, courtesy of my check book. He wrote me two tickets, including one for not having the current liability insurance card in my car (the old one had just been mailed out and I thought I’d already put it in the glove box before the trip - people make mistakes.) Long story short, I missed the court date trying to get the paperwork together, as I actually misplaced the insurance card altogether and I’ve been busy - I know, poor excuse, but I mean, I was getting around to it, and I did have insurance.

So I just got this thing in the mail. It actually arrived a couple of weeks ago at my post office box but I’ve been out of pocket and haven’t had a chance to check the mail. It’s a notice from the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles informing me that I did not appear in a court in another state on the date specified and my license is going to be suspended on April 6th if I don’t contact that state, pay the ticket, and then get proof of payment and send it to the Nevada DMV. That’s just bullshit on so many different levels I don’t know where to begin. I am going to get this all squared away in the next couple of days, no problem, but that isn’t the fucking point. This isn’t Nevada’s business. It’s with Utah. Where I grew up, which I think represents the U.S. in general pretty well, if you get a suspended license, you really had to have screwed up. Big time. Like at least a DUI or something like that which I’ve never had. Suspended licenses have always and should always continue to be a big deal. They have gotten to where they are passing them out like candy lately, out here. It’s ridiculous. And now a suspension of a Nevada license based on something that allegedly happened in an entirely different legal and political jurisdiction??

Police are not meant to be given the authority to enact these sorts of new “programs” on their own. It’s just outrageous to me that people don’t get more indignant about the way things are going. If anything, Nevada should be acting first and foremost to protect the interests of its citizens, not helping another state line its coffers with some extra cash. Nevada taxpayers are paying for this service. The labor costs, the materials, the extra infrastructure… All to assist Utah in what amounts to bill collection.

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