Rick Perry

This is what it is all about and if you want your neighbors to become like the Jews in Nazi Germany then we need to keep 4 Texas state troopers working a 10 mile stretch and you keep cheering. Then when your taxes go up for to support the prisons for all the criminals whose license have been revoked and are unable to pay fines. That said fins are not being used for their earmarked purpose.(probably making Perry richer) so you are not smart on two counts 1.that these fins will improve emergency rooms and the roads 2. that it will keep the so called criminals off the roads.

AUSTIN - Texas motorists charged with certain driving violations owe the state more than $1 billion in surcharges, and many of the 1.2 million people on the unpaid list are driving without valid licenses and at risk of arrest.

The Texas Driver Responsibility Program was designed to assess large additional fines - into the thousands of dollars apiece - to discourage certain offenses, such as drunken driving, and generate money for trauma care and highway construction.

And while the Legislature may give some relief to lower-income drivers in two years, a leading critic said the program remains a modern-day "debtors prison" for a large number of Texans. An estimated one in nine arrest warrants in Austin, El Paso and other cities are being issued because of the surcharge program.

"It's a complete failure," said state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, who sponsored unsuccessful legislation to kill the program last year. Shapleigh was able to insert language into a related bill that would waive surcharges for indigent Texans, but it won't be effective until the fall of 2011, and then only if it has no significant impact on the state budget.

"What's happening is that people can't pay their fines, and then they lose their driver's license. That means they can't get to work," he said. "It has a snowball effect that's hurting a large number of citizens."

Gov. Rick Perry, who signed the surcharge legislation into law, remains a backer of the program despite its troubles. In signing the measure in 2003, he cited projections indicating it would raise $1 billion for trauma care centers by 2008.

"The governor continues to support this program, but he expects the Public Safety Commission to continue looking for ways to improve it," said Katherine Cesinger, a spokeswoman for Perry.

But the program never worked as planned. More than 60 percent of the surcharges - $1.05 billion - has not been paid. Of the 1.9 million Texas drivers who have been told to pay, about 1.2 million have not, nearly two-thirds of those in the Driver Responsibility Program. If drivers don't pay, their licenses are automatically suspended 30 days after their initial conviction.

Where fines have gone

The state has collected more than $672 million, but none of it has gone to highways. And just a fraction has gone to trauma centers, said Shapleigh, who noted that the original push for the program came during the state's budget crunch in 2003, when lawmakers were scrambling for new revenue sources. The money is sitting in the state Treasury.