DMV fees waived to encourage license reinstatement, but barriers remain for those with debt from minor infractions
Malik Seamster needs to get his daughter to and from school, go to the grocery store, landscaping or warehouse jobs and elsewhere. Without a driver’s license, getting to all these places means asking for rides from others, waiting in the rain at the bus stop or calling a rideshare service.
The reason for Seamster’s transportation hassle is a minor traffic ticket causing him to lose his driver’s license. Five years ago, Seamster, 25 of Portland, received a roughly $100 ticket for impeding traffic. At the time, he was living with his mother and had a two-year-old daughter. He just didn’t have the money to pay the ticket.
The unpaid ticket was referred to a collections agency and the amount owed piled up and he lost his license. He didn’t have the money for five other traffic tickets for infractions like speeding as well as driving with a suspended license. Even after signing up for community service and payment programs, the roughly $9,000 he owes remains a barrier to getting back his license.
“I should have my own license, and I’m bagging on myself,” he said. “I just think about it sometimes, like, ‘Man, you got to get this together.’ But of course, I don’t have the (thousands of dollars). It’s just an all-around bad scenario.”
"For running a red light or having a broken tail light, the punishment shouldn’t be decades of court debt, the inability to drive and struggles to get employment.”
Oregon lawmakers took note of people like Seamster who had their lives enormously complicated after falling into a pit of debt over a relatively minor traffic infraction. But the situation of people like Seamster shows how recent legislation still leaves tens of thousands of Oregonians mired in years-old court debt and unable to legally drive.
Emily Teplin Fox, an attorney with the Oregon Law Center who represents Oregonians trying to reinstate their licenses, said she and other advocates would like to see more holistic changes around court debt.
She said concerns from judges, legislators and the public over holding people accountable for violating traffic laws are reasonable. But she said upending a low-income person’s life for years because of a minor traffic violation is a disproportionate response.
“People should follow traffic laws,” she said. “However, for running a red light or having a broken tail light, the punishment shouldn’t be decades of court debt, the inability to drive and struggles to get employment.”
So far, 10 states — ranging from California to Mississippi — banned courts from suspending driver’s licenses over unpaid court debt.
In 2020, the Oregon Legislature passed House Bill 4210, which banned courts from suspending driving privileges over failure to pay traffic fines.
A Street Roots investigation found the Oregon DMV issued 90,600 license suspensions to drivers unable to comply with court orders in 2017 alone, not because they were deemed a public threat. Over the last decade, 334,338 Oregonians have seen their licenses suspended because of unpaid fines, not safety reasons, according to data submitted to the legislature in 2020.
When the bill was being considered, advocates and legislators said these suspensions, which can last up to 20 years, are particularly disruptive to low-income people, who are unable to pay the fines but often need their cars for work, doctor’s appointments or taking kids to school.
The bill offered no retroactive help for people trying to regain their driver’s license suspended because of unpaid fines. But in June, the legislature passed a bill intended to make it a little easier for Oregonians to get their license reinstated.
House Bill 2523 waives the $75 license reinstatement fee. The new law sunsets on Jan. 1, 2023. It doesn’t apply to drivers who had their licenses suspended for driving under the influence or failure to take a breathalyzer.
Fox said court-imposed debt can sometimes take years to pay off and people trying to regain their license also have to pay costs associated with written and driving tests. She said many Oregon Law Center clients said the final fee remains a stumbling block.
“Once they’ve cleared all the debt they have this final hurdle that’s actually pretty expensive,” she said. “We had a lot of clients say that was the sticking point.”
Numbers provided by Oregon DMV spokesman David House show there were about 75,000 Oregonians eligible for the waiver as of April. Since going into effect on Sept. 25, 10,535 Oregonians have had their licenses reinstated with the fee waiver allowed by the new law, according to the DMV.
Fox said it’s positive so many Oregonians have used the new law. But she said the law offers no immediate help for people such as Seamster because they are still climbing out of court debt from old traffic fines.
“There are still going to be a lot of people who can’t get their license even with this bill in place,” she said.
For others, the new law offers some hope.
Tracy Chavez, 60 of Bend, is hopeful she’ll get her driver’s license back after nearly two decades.
Chavez recalled how her suspension began in 1994 when she was rushing to the hospital where her fiance was having a medical emergency. She was pulled over and given a ticket for driving 50 mph in a school zone.
She worked out a payment plan with the court to pay off the large ticket. At the time, she had been working at her fiance’s carpet-cleaning business. When her fiance died, that meant a loss of two incomes for her household that included four children. She lost her license after not paying the ticket.
Chavez said bus service was non-existent in Bend, and she had no choice but to drive without a license to bartending jobs, the grocery store and taking her kids to school. For years, she kept nervously checking behind her for the police.
“My kids have fallout from that,” she said. “All of them get anxiety when a cop gets behind them. And that’s my fault. I feel bad about that.”
With her license suspended, Chavez became familiar to police after she got pulled over for not signaling, no license plate or other “dumb things,” she said. That also meant more tickets for driving without a license or insurance and more debt.
She said she had at least four cars impounded, losing most of them after she couldn’t pay the fees to have them released. She said she was particularly upset about losing a silver Volkswagen Jetta about a year and a half ago.
Chavez received tickets in other parts of the state, including Eugene and Medford. Trying to resolve the unpaid fines (she estimates are around $16,000) meant navigating multiple courts, which she said offered her confusing or incomplete information. One court she owed money to, the municipal court of Phoenix, Oregon, had shut down.
Chavez was mostly resigned to her situation until her daughter, a legislative staffer, helped connect her to the Oregon Law Center. With the help of her lawyer, she said she’s worked out an $80-a-month payment plan and has cleared other requirements to get her license back, like passing a written exam and filing proof of insurance.
She’s looking forward to an experience she hasn’t had in a long time: driving without anxiously looking over her shoulder.
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