City fixing driver’s license laws; now state needs to act
Driving is a lifeline in New Mexico. We need it to go to work — sometimes in places many miles from home. We need a driver’s license to access our families’ basic needs, to pick up our kids at school, to bring our parents to the doctor — in other words, to be a functioning member of society.
Today, hundreds of thousands of New Mexicans can no longer legally drive — not because they were dangerous drivers but because their income did not allow them to pay a traffic ticket immediately.
When New Mexico takes a license away from a working father or mother, they are condemned to a life without the ability to work or care for their families. And all this, for what? These debt-based driver’s license suspensions aren’t effective at coercing payments and are a net loss to New Mexico’s economy and tax base. No one benefits when we keep parents out of work and children out of school and day care. This counterproductive policy is felt most acutely by women, who make less money but bear the brunt of court-related costs.
Last week, the city of Santa Fe took a big step toward fixing this problem by passing an ordinance to limit debtbased driver’s license suspensions in our city to help hardworking families get back on the road. The city will continue to suspend licenses for dangerous driving and to enforce our traffic laws by ticketing and requiring the payment of fines and fees — we will not, however, take away residents’ freedom to drive legally because they cannot afford to pay.
Suspending driver’s licenses is a counterproductive budget policy and one of the least efficient ways for our government to recoup its costs. When people are given the option of affordable payment plans to handle their traffic tickets, they’re much more likely to pay fines and fees. Local governments in other states have seen collections increase significantly after passing reforms to end debt-based license suspensions.
Over 40 percent of people who lose their licenses also lose their jobs. Those who can find new jobs usually take significant pay cuts. When we lose workers because they can no longer legally drive to work, our economy shrinks and our state loses power. These are not the kind of negative impacts Santa Fe or New Mexico can afford.
By ending this practice, we would see not only a net increase to our GDP, but an overall increase to the quality of life for many santafesinos and those from surrounding communities. We can’t, however, stop there.
To get to the root of the problem, legislative reform is needed at the state level. In the last five years, 22 states — including Texas, Colorado and Arizona — have passed reforms to curb license
suspensions for unpaid fines and fees. It’s imperative for New Mexico’s future that state lawmakers add New Mexico to this list when the Legislature reconvenes next year.
Statewide, 65 percent of voters oppose debt-based license suspensions — and in Santa Fe, 83 percent of voters oppose this practice. Majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans oppose debt-based license suspensions, as do both men and women in all regions of our state.
As New Mexico emerges from a pandemic that has financially devastated many hardworking families, ending debt-based driver’s license suspensions is the economic boost we need to help working families. After all, we’re only free to thrive when we’re free to drive.