The indispensible National Motorists Association (think of it as a libertarian version of AAA) has a terrific piece in its newsletter (sorry, no link) this month about a nasty series of new traffic laws in Virginia being pushed by a particularly sleazy state delegate:

Last year and this year, a bill was introduced in the Virginia Legislature to “punish dangerous drivers.” This is code for further ripping off citizenswho acquired a couple of traffic tickets.

[...]

We’re not talking pocket change, here. If you have four or more points on your license, you will be fined $100 [each year]. If you have more than four points, you will be fined an additional $75 per point. [Radley's note: This is in addition to the normal fines for the violations that got you thsoe points.] There also additional fines for specific violations in addition to what you will be charged for points [again, on top of fines already on the books].

A reckless driving ticket, for example, will cost you $350 on top of the point fees. The fiscal estimate calls for this law to generate $600 million in revenue, 30 percent of the total money programmed for highway projects.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

The sponsor of this legislation is Delegate David Albo, from Fairfax County. And what does Mr. Albo do when he’s not sticking it to motorists in the House of Delegates? Why, he’s a traffic attorney, a partner in a firm specializing in helping people on the verge of losing their drivers’ licenses.

Here’s the website for Albo’s firm. Note that they seem to specialize in DUI cases. Then note that Albo’s bill also recommends a $750 surcharge for DUI offenses, above and beyond Virginia’s already-exorbitant DUI penalties.

In fact, if you peruse the legislation Albo has sponsored or co-sponsored over the years, you’ll find a number of bills that raise some pretty serious conflict of interest questions, including bills aimed at increasing the minimum jail sentences for DUI offenses (here, here, and here), a previous bill calling for increased fines and points for traffic offenses (here), the admissability of evidence in photo enforcement cases (here). Albo introduced a bill last year that actually became law — it suspends for one year the driver’s license of anyone convicted of purchasing alcohol for anyone underage, intoxicated (!), or interdicted.

I’m all for a citizen legislature. But not when citizen legislators are passing laws aimed at steering customers toward their criminal defense practices.

I wonder if Albo tells his clients that he wrote many of the laws they’ve hired him to defend them from.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 12:09 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Alcohol, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.