Event aiming to reinstate suspended drivers licenses set in Hillsborough

According to an analysis conducted by the Miami Herald last year, most driver’s license suspensions in  Florida occur because of a failure to pay fees for traffic violations, not because of unsafe driving practices.

The failure to pay fees accounted for 77 percent of all license suspensions in Florida between 2012 and 2015, according to an analysis of DHSMV data. They included traffic tickets, court costs, and child support payments.

To help alleviate the probem in Hillsborough County, Tampa Bay area state Reps. Dana Young and Darryl Rouson plan an event Friday that will allow some residents with suspended driver’s licenses to have a judicial hearing to try to have them reinstated. It will take place at the George Edgecomb Courthouse, at 800 Twiggs St. in Tampa.

“The impact of that is that you’ve got a lot of people who were in a rough situation already that are really spiraling into poverty because they can’t drive, they can’t get to work, they can’t provide for themselves or their family,” Young said Monday. “So the legislation that we’ve already passed and that we’re looking at this Session takes a really hard look at the practice of suspending licenses and trying to put some rationale into it so that we’re not ruining people’s lives with punitive measures.”

Young and Rouson worked together to pass legislation in 2014 that gives judges more discretion when dealing with license suspensions.

St. Petersburg GOP state Sen. Jeff Brandes held a hearing in October in the Transportation Committee to discuss the issue. “As I have indicated previously, I believe the current driver’s license suspension policy needs to be revised,” Brandes said in a statement at that time. “Far too many of our citizens have had their license suspended for reasons that have nothing to do with driving safety. In far too many cases, a suspension does nothing to keep other drivers safe. Rather, the current process often penalizes minor offenders with relatively exorbitant fees; fees that cannot be easily absorbed in the budgets of many of our citizens.”

Although the issue has bipartisan support, not everyone thinks it’s a great idea.

In the letters to the editor section of Saturday’s Tampa Tribune, Tampa resident Craig R. McNess accused Rouson and Young of “pandering for votes.”

“Driving is a privilege, and is one way to protect us legal, law-abiding, taxpaying, voting Floridians,”  McNess wrote. “Clearly, these two do not want to have these laws enforced. So many politicians break their promise to protect and serve when they refuse to enforce the laws they wrote, and actually think they can grab a big chunk of voters as the same time.”