New Law Could Revoke Your Driver’s License
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A new law could allow the state to take away your driver’s license if you do not pay your court fees one year after you have been convicted of a crime. The law, which went into effect July 2, has court clerks happy, but some attorneys worried. Court clerk Kathy Blount has been with the Madison County court system for 30 years. Even though she’s part of the second largest revenue office in the county, she said they still can’t get all defendants to pay their court fees. “[The judge does] payment plans,” Blount said. “We work really, really hard with these people to try to make it easy on them to make these payments.” Blount told ABC 7 Eyewitness News that if defendants are trying hard to pay their fees and can’t pay them all in a year, they could be granted a stay by the judge, but it’s only for 180 days and can only be granted for extreme hardship. “During that 180 days, if you three times consecutively fail to pay them you will automatically be suspended,” Blount said. Critics said the law is not a good idea, because there isn’t a lot of public transportation in rural areas for defendants to get to work if they can’t drive. “I think it could be detrimental and actually cause further problems if people that can’t pay their court costs or fines are not able to drive and therefore unable to work or function in society,” said public defender George Googe. Tennessee courts will just have to wait until July of next year to see if this law is effective.
