Posted December 3, 20233:17 pm
By Editorial Board, cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
In a welcome development, state legislators are sponsoring a bipartisan measure, Senate Bill 37, to help Ohio drivers whose licenses have been suspended. This is exactly the kind of cross-aisle cooperation that the General Assembly needs to generate more often. It’s also very much needed as part of ongoing efforts to correct an injustice in Ohio where most license suspensions are not for driving infractions but for inability to pay court and related debts.
“Ohio is one of 23 states that suspend driver’s licenses for failure to pay civil or criminal fines or fees,” The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland reported last year in a major study of the problem, “Road to Nowhere: Debt-Related Driver’s License Suspensions in Ohio.”
“Approximately 60% of all Ohio driver’s license suspensions are based on a person’s failure to pay money owed to a court, to the Ohio BMV [Bureau of Motor Vehicles], or to a private third-party,” the society said in a summary of its findings.
Among other findings, the society reported that Ohio motorists face more than 3 million debt-related suspensions annually; that such suspensions cost residents of Ohio’s highest poverty ZIP codes an average of $7.9 million annually; and that such suspensions cost residents of Ohio ZIP codes with the highest percentages of people of color an average of $12 million each year.
It’s also notable that, in the absence of national identification documents, showing a valid photo ID, of which driver’s licenses are examples, is increasingly important -- for example, a valid Ohio driver’s license can help ensure that an Ohio voter is given a ballot at the polls.
Even before the Legal Aid study, it was obvious Ohio needed to fix what had turned into a nightmarish Catch 22 system for drivers racking up multiple suspensions by driving anyway, because they couldn’t afford the reinstatement fees growing like topsy -- and that couldn’t be worked off with community service. The problem’s extent prompted pilot projects and new laws whose successes SB 37 is now seeking to build upon more comprehensively.
Sponsored by Republican state Sen. Louis Blessing III and Democratic state Sen. Catherine Ingram, both Cincinnatians, SB 37 is pending in the state Senate’s Judiciary Committee. According to the nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission, SB 37 – if approved by the Senate and Ohio House and signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine – would pare back the plethora of reasons for which Ohioans’ driver’s licenses can now be suspended.
According to the sponsors’ testimony, “Under current Ohio law, there are almost 70 violations that can result in someone losing their driver’s license. Unfortunately, these penalties often impact low-income individuals and families the hardest. Imagine a person is convicted of something that has nothing to do with driving, for example drug possession, and has their driver’s license suspended. Just like that, their ability to drive to work, take their child to school, go to a medical appointment, or pick up groceries has been severely diminished, if not completely vanished.”
Their bill, they noted, “does not make any changes to driver’s license suspensions when the violations involve driving.” Suspension is clearly warranted, for example, in cases of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The bill would leave Ohio’s DUI law, a criminal law, in place.
As for Ohio’s financial responsibility law for motorists, which in effect requires drivers to be insured, in the proposed Blessing-Ingram bill the insurance requirement would remain in place, but the “lookback period” – the time span for determining whether an offender was a repeat offender – would be pruned back from five years to one year.
The Ohio State Bar Association is among those backing SB 37, telling the committee it “supports reforms that limit driver’s license suspensions to dangerous driving offenses and make it easier for a person to get their license back when they have complied with court orders and penalties. The loss of a driver’s license creates a substantial barrier to employment and responsible citizenship.”
In accordance with federal law, SB 37′s sponsors said the bill cannot prevent courts from imposing license suspensions for failure to pay child support. But the bill would let a driver present evidence that such a suspension would, in effect, prevent the payment of child support (for example, because of an inability to drive to a job, etc.).
All in all, Senate Bill 37 is constructive, bipartisan – and deserves passage by the General Assembly.
Source: cleveland.com - Driver’s-license-suspension reform bill shows constructive bipartisanship is not dead at the Statehouse: editorial