Bill looks to regulate car booting in Georgia
ATLANTA — A new bill currently in the Georgia Senate looks to regulate the booting industry in the state, after an attempt to ban the practice last year failed.
House Bill 119, introduced by State Senator Josh McLaurin, D-Atlanta, looks to deal with what he says are the two “most abusive practice of the industry.”
Booting company employees are allowed sit and monitor parking lots, waiting for people to leave their cars and immediately booting them. The companies are also allowed to pay a portion of their fees to property manager owners for the privilege of monitoring their lots.
“Together, these provisions create very perverse incentives for booting companies to throw boots on as many cars as possible, whether they’re in compliance or not to drive up revenues for both the booting company and the property owner,” McLaurin said. “Because of that kickback scheme, the property owners have very little incentive to keep the booting companies from abusing drivers.”
McLaurin said the bill will prevent property owners from making money off booting; they property would instead have to call the booting company to handle cars parked there without authorization instead of having the companies monitor parking lots.
Georgia law prohibits booting but municipalities including Atlanta, Decatur, DeKalb County and Smyrna allow booting on private property by private companies.
“What I’m trying to get the word out to the public is to try to build awareness about how the horrors stories we’re seeing with booting, the pervasiveness of booting in Atlanta and other cities is really a result of booter having free reign to monitor lots,” McLaurin said.
McLaurin tried that last year without success, as some senators expressed concerns over private property rights, and has tweaked the legislation this time.
“The difference is obviously we are not banning the whole industry this year,” McLaurin said. “We are allowing booting to be used, but the property owner would have to designate it on a case by case basis and they wouldn’t make any money from doing so.”
The bill was voted out of the Senate public safety committee Wednesday on a 5-2 voted and now goes to the Senate rules committee. McLaurin hopes to get it out of the senate and over to house for a vote during the last couple of weeks of the legislative session.
Last year, a pair of women, known as the Boot Girls, gain notoriety on social media for going out and using boot keys to remove boots from cars around metro Atlanta.
The Atlanta Police Department says owning a boot key is not illegal but using one to modify, tamper or disengage a booting device may result in charges such as criminal trespass, theft of services, theft by taking or second-degree property damage.