#Pierce county relicensing program wa drivers#
#Pierce county relicensing program wa driver#
#Pierce county relicensing program wa license#

#Pierce county relicensing program wa license#

'It is rather inefficient to have people go to multiple different courts to try to take care of getting their license back,' Eide says. But he has no authority to reduce and consolidate fines from most of the county's 39 cities, much less another county. He presides over King County relicensing court. Court jurisdictions are like a patchwork across the state. But only a handful of Washington jurisdictions offer this option – most do not.Ĭourt officials tell me relicensing court clients tend to gain a significant advantage because they can get better repayment terms from the collection agencies.īut even relicensing courts have their limitations. They live in a county with a relicensing court.

#Pierce county relicensing program wa drivers#

These three drivers you've just met are actually the lucky ones. 'Wouldn't it make you feel pretty dismal if you had to ask your mother for something of that nature?' Standing outside the courthouse, he tells me he had to ask his mom for bail money. Tim admits taking care of his 15 unpaid tickets just wasn't a priority until he got stopped in Montana and thrown in jail. 'Here I sit with $10,000 in frigging traffic fines, he says. He owes nearly $10,000 in fines, fees and interest. But he's a married father of two, an out-of-work union electrician who's already on the verge of losing his house.Īnd he's just gotten sticker shock from a collection agency representative. Tim is another relicensing court defendant. In any given year, up to 25 percent of tickets end up in collections. They ran a special report and the results were strikingly similar. That's what I asked the court administrators in Washington's two most populous counties -– King and Pierce. So how many Sandy Seaks there are out there? And what percentage of traffic tickets go unpaid? Seak hopes she can work off some of her fines through community service. 'If I had that money then it would be the first thing that I take care of and I would have my license back.'

'My situation is because I'm poor,' Seak says. The problem is she owes nearly $3,000 on half-a-dozen outstanding tickets.īut her only income is about $800 a month in unemployment. Now she's a mother and wants to clear her record. Seak admits she was young and irresponsible then. She got a ticket for a car accident, but never paid the fine. Seak says her troubles began when she was 17. 'The tickets are just stacking up and having to drive and look over my shoulder is just uncomfortable,' she says. She recently got stopped for driving on a suspended license and for no insurance. That's exactly what 22-year old Sandy Seak is counting on. 'And that means he can get his license reissued while he's paying off his tickets.'

'After he has started to make some payments, then the holds on his license are released by the court,' Nave explains.

#Pierce county relicensing program wa driver#

But it also gives a suspended driver a way to get their license back sooner. She says relicensing court frees up prosecutors for more serious cases.

'We understand that some people get themselves so far into debt that getting out of debt is extremely difficult,' says Maggie Nave, head of the District Court unit of the King County Prosecutor's office. The prosecutor agrees to hold off filing a criminal charge if the defendant agrees to a repayment plan. It's called driving while suspended in the third degree. Like drug court, it's a diversion program for people who have been stopped by a cop while driving on a license that was suspended for failure to pay traffic tickets. 'It's very, very, very important (that you get your license back),' Stowers stresses. Now Stowers - an unemployed father of three - has come to relicensing court to begin to dig out from a mess he admits he got himself into. That was several years -– and several tickets -– ago. 'I put it in my glove compartment and forgot all about it.' 'That's exactly what happened,' Stowers says. Stowers says his troubles started when he stuffed a ticket in his glove box. It's a special court for people who have lost their driver's license because of unpaid traffic tickets. And that has led to more tickets, more debt and even jail.īut drivers who want to clear their debts and get their licenses back must run a gauntlet that includes collection agents and a patchwork system of courts.īrandon Stowers sits on a wooden bench outside a King County District courtroom in Burien. Like a lot of people in their situation, they continued to drive. – In Washington, nearly 300,000 drivers currently have suspended licenses -– not because they've driven drunk or committed a hit-and-run, but because they failed to pay their traffic tickets. Relicensing court client Brandon Stowers is trying to get his driver's license back after not paying multiple traffic tickets.