Ordinance Tax farming

[nmoore63]

http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/16/minor ... ve-prosecu

A couple of cities in the California desert have found a novel and remarkably cruel way to make money—force citizens to pay for the privilege of being prosecuted by the attorneys contracting with these cities.


The cities of Indio and Coachella partnered up with a private law firm, Silver & Wright, to prosecute citizens in criminal court for violations of city ordinances that call for nothing more than small fines—things like having a mess in your yard or selling food without a business license.

Those cited for these violations fix the problems and pay the fines, a typical code enforcement story. The kicker comes a few weeks or months later when citizens get a bill in the mail for thousands of dollars from the law firm that prosecuted them. They are forcing citizens to pay for the private lawyers used to take them to court in the first place. So a fine for a couple of hundred dollars suddenly becomes a bill for $3,000 or $20,000 or even more.

[Ex-California]

Jesus Christ

How is this legal?

[Speaker to Animals]

Burn them with fire.

[heydaralon]

I guarantee that Fife is behind this. I've never been more certain of anything in my life. How does that dude sleep at night?

[LVH2]

Welcome to Robocop being real life.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Wow. That's a first-class ticket to civil unrest.

[C-Mag]

My In laws live in College town taken over by Filthy Collectivists. They have City Inspectors trolling allys looking for Water Heater and similar appliance boxes so they can write a ticket for failing to get a city permit to change a burned out fucking water heater. You either pay the fine or get sued by the city.

Gotta get them Frogskins so we can pay to put immigrants up and get the community culturally enriched.

[de officiis]

I wonder whether this is a symptom of a larger problem of local governments desperately finding ways to maintain their tax base.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I wonder whether this is a symptom of a larger problem of local governments desperately finding ways to maintain their tax base.

Sounds about right. Even the road pirate system isn’t keeping them afloat any more.

[LVH2]

I wonder how much the city's cut even is. Red light cameras lose money for the city.

Might just be a symptom of 3rd world corruption.