The Advocate: Speeding fines is a lot of small Louisiana towns' bread and butter

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Worried speed traps would hurt tourism Louisiana legislators and officials over the past dozen years have tried new laws, investigated police officers, even attempted shaming towns with flashing warning signs, all in hopes of tamping down the number of tickets written by small-town police officers.

None of it works.

The number of Louisiana towns, villages and small cities in which fines make up at least half their revenues has risen from 15 in 2007 to 25 in 2018, according to a review by The Advocate of annual state audits of local finances.

For 60 other municipalities, fines and forfeitures account for more than 30 percent of government revenues. That’s up from 28 in 2007.

And 194 of the state’s 304 incorporated cities, towns and villages raise more in fines and forfeitures than they do in property taxes, according to latest financial audits.

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Port Vincent Mayor Johnny Page said traffic fines is one of the few revenue sources available to his village of 749 residents. His municipality gets some rent from a cell tower, part of the parish beer tax, $50,453 in utility fees and a few other sources. But he is thankful for the additional $394,818 from traffic fines, which accounted for a little more than half the town’s revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30.

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Similarly, Sherbin Collette, mayor of Henderson, for years has passionately challenged his town’s presence on national websites as one of the region’s top speed traps. Henderson’s police chief recently was investigated by the state inspector general for the town’s ticket-writing practices.

The town’s limits include a strip of Interstate 10 from the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge to the Exit 115, the Henderson exit, and is the scene of hundreds of serious, often fatal, wrecks. His officers sit among billboards of lawyers soliciting accident victims as about 80,000 vehicles a day pass. They pull over motorists driving more than 10 mph over the posted speed limit.

“I am sure that we save lives every day, every hour,” Collette said. But he acknowledges that the $1.1 million in fines — 85 percent of the town’s revenues in 2018 — is important to the town of 1,771 residents. Henderson reported raising $8,433 in property taxes and $190,386 in sales taxes for the fiscal year ending June 30, according to the annual audit of the town’s finances.

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