Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The Cutting Edge of Fee Oppression

A fee in its purest sense is a payment in exchange for a service. And, as opposed to a tax, it is a voluntary involvement. Some good examples here in the city is the fee charged to play on a softball team in the city leagues, or to close off a street for a block party.

I have no objection to such fees. It follows the rule: If you want to play, you’ve got to pay. The choice is yours.

Government units have expanded the definition of “fee” to include so-called “dedicated funds.” Examples of that here in the city are the fire department fees and water run off fees. Such a “fee” is not voluntary. It is assed like—and essentially is—a tax.

This involuntarily assessed government fee is use for two purposes: to hide a tax increase and/or to circumvent a tax levy limit.

This involuntary fee is not a direct exchange for a service rendered. It pretends to be, but is not. For instance, it does not cost the fire department 150.00 to inspect smoke detectors of a store or apartment building. It doesn’t cost the fire department anything extra except for a little gas money to run the fire engine around town. We are already paying for the vehicle and personnel in our property taxes. These fire department fees were used to increase the fire department budget without using property taxes…for the reasons stated above.

Then we have the UNIT “fees.” Our City Council has developed a “fee” which by anyone’s comprehension, is not really a fee at all, but a fine. It represents the cutting edge of fee oppression.

The reasons for assessment in this manner is to bypass the burden of allowing constituents their right to due process and appeal.

My alderman, Jim Kaplan, has suggest to me that the way to eliminate UNIT is for everyone to just obey the “law of the land” (as he put it) and do what UNIT wants. I use Jim as an example, but I have total certainty that the rest of the City Council is in total lockstep agreement with that concept.

There is a new fine procedure of which most Council members must surely be aware: the traffic signal cameras, used in many cities around the United States and the Western World, wherein a motorist who runs a stop light, is fined by the camera and its associated computers…through the mail.

Great fund raisers are these cameras. And despite proponents of the cameras using the same argument Jim uses—just obey the law and we will get rid of them—California courts, and a few other cities, are ruling the use of these cameras illegal…for lack of due process. Not one of these judges is saying it is OK to run a red light. What is senior in importance to monitoring this reckless practice of motorists, the courts are saying, is constitutional rights to due process.

No one I know of is recommending getting rid of UNIT, as Jim suggests. I am only saying put UNIT back on the constitutional basis on which UNIT operated before they were given this fee power.

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