Taking it out of your PFD

KATE GOLDEN/Frontiersman reporter

PALMER - So you thought you didn't have to bother paying your speeding tickets in Palmer.

Sure, a police officer could get a traffic warrant and go after you - but for $25? Not realistic, Officer Kelly Turney said at Tuesday's Palmer city council meeting.

"Our tickets have no teeth," Turney said.

But they'll get you in the end - out of your Alaska Permanent Fund dividend.

The Palmer police department has initiated a new program to garnish dividends, using information from the Alaska Court System databases and from permanent fund officers. The city council, on Tuesday, unanimously supported the program.

Palmer could recoup tens of thousands of dollars for the price of a few hours on a computer each year, Turney said.

He said that in other places where this has been implemented, such as Kenai, the cities have recovered an average of two-thirds of the unpaid fines.

"I think this could be a real benefit to the budget," council member Brad Hanson said.

Last year, traffic violators in Palmer paid $49,000. Yet Palmer is still owed more than $40,000 in unpaid tickets, according to Turney's initial estimate.

But nobody knows the precise rate of default.

"It's a big question mark as to how many people do not pay, because we do not issue warrants any more," Turney said.

The new program will garnish PFDs of people for whom there's no question of guilt: those who pleaded no contest, pleaded guilty or received a default guilty judgment for not showing at court.

With help from the Alaska Court System, an officer with security clearance to see people's confidential records - most likely Turney - will generate a list of people with such tickets. He'll pick out guilty dividend recipients from a list supplied by a permanent fund officer and send the information to Juneau.

In September, the city will get one big check for the combined collected tickets.

This year, ticket-holders from the last seven years will be garnished. After 2005, only the past year's records will be checked.

"I'm still working on getting the right parameters in place to make sure they get the proper charges," Turney said.

He noted that if Palmer adopted state traffic laws, it could recoup money for violations of those as well.

"I write those tickets," he said. "I think there should be consequences for them, and so do my partners."

Two other agencies, the state Office of Children's Services and the federal Internal Revenue Service, have authority to garnish dividends. Council member Ken Erbey, who works for the IRS, called garnishments "very effective."

"We were averaging $6 million a year just from permanent fund garnishments," he said. "When you notify someone that they're not going to get their permanent fund dividend, they come out of the woodwork."