re: Anyone receive a notice from La Dept of Public Safety about their car insurance?

Louisiana state police, Colonel Mike Edmonson says the letter is legitimate and that the state recently sent out 1 million letters in an effort to recoup millions of dollars

Damn that's a lot of letters.

Yeah me and the SO have discussed a move after she graduates. It's getting closer and closer.

I'm almost at the point of moving out of country.

You have to just keep trying them on the phone. Try early in the morning or very late in the afternoon. This happened to me after I moved to Minnesota, but I sent in proof of insurance coverage to new state and they cleared the record once I was able to talk to a person.

Louisiana state police, Colonel Mike Edmonson says the letter is legitimate and that the state recently sent out 1 million letters in an effort to recoup millions of dollars
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The population of LA was estimated to be 4.65 million by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2014. I'm not sure of the age distribution, but let's say that 15% (a conservative estimate, I think) are too young to even have a Driver's License. That means that of the ~3.95 million residents over age 16 (plus how ever many vehicle owning residents had the good sense to get in their car and drive...) about 1 in 4 has violated this law.

I understand fining people for not having liability insurance. However, being fined for not responding to a letter that was never received (if even ever sent) smells like total bullshite to me.

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The only thing this is is a money grab.

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People are required to report back to the OMV that they moved to another state, sold their car, etc. This is the case in every U.S. state, so their various automotive fees are paid in full.

Sounds like a lot of people in this thread didn't report/pay what they were supposed to the OMV and are mad that the state is doing the right thing in keeping its collections up-to-date.

I wish my state (Alabama) would actually try to collect all of its outstanding fines from the non-contributors of society instead of raising the taxes on those who actually do pay regularly. Louisiana, I salute you.

This has got to cause a huge mess. They can't be sending out notices 3 at a time saying 1st notice, 2nd notice, 3rd notice. That isn't legal. They also can't prove they ever sent out anything to begin with because they didn't. They need to find a way to go after the people who actually broke the law but forget the past due charges they are trying to hit everyone with for supposedly not responding to some invisible letter. We never broke a law nor got a past notice. Yet if they refuse to budge they are just taking money from my federal refund? I promise you there will be a huge class action lawsuit. I may be contacting a lawyer this week if I can't get them on the phone and get them to back off.

I did some more research on this. The Office of Debt Recovery was formed in the past couple years by Tim Barfield (Jindal's tax guy and former Shaw Group exec) to go after old fees/debts due state agencies. If an agency has a debt that is 60 days old, they can submit the debt to the ODR for collection. It appears the ODR has very broad sweeping rights in going after the debt. See here for the state law creating/authorizing the entity. The end of that legislation states the ODR can utilize the Dept. of Treasury's offset program, which can in fact garnish federal tax refunds.

It looks like, generally speaking, Louisiana has a 10 year statute of limitations on old debt (credit card debt is 3 years). However, it is unclear whether that limitation applies at all to debts owed to the government and whether that limitation would be from the time of the "violation" or from the time Louisiana calls it a debt. I did see one article quoting Barfield that said many of the state's debts are uncollectible at this point, so the state shouldn't expect hundreds of millions to pour in. In fact, the office only has 8-10 people working in it if the article I found is accurate.

Also, apparently the police pay raise that someone in the thread mentioned earlier was specifically approved because the ODR was to go after these old license violations to collect money to pay for it.

Where this gets a bit murky (as if not murky enough) is that many of these letters are going to old addresses. One of the requirements of the federal offset program is that the reporting agency must provide you with notices and provide an opportunity to resolve the debt. The fact that they are not using registered/certified mail or even getting current addresses seems like this would be very hard to ultimately enforce. That being said, they can make it a complete pain in the arse even if the law isn't ultimately on their side. My guess is they have carpet bombed everyone with a violation with the hope that some pay up without much fuss. I can't imagine they will send 1 million requests to the feds for offset with the shoddy evidence trail they are trying to concoct.

Consider how many people they could go after if they concentrated on SE parishes at end of 2005 and beginning of 2006. Thousands of cars were destroyed in Katrina. I know my car that sat in 8 feet of flooding was towed away by my insurance company while I was living and working in California. Didn't turn in any plate.

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However, it is unclear whether that limitation applies at all to debts owed to the government and whether that limitation would be from the time of the "violation" or from the time Louisiana calls it a debt.

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this is the reason for the phantom "first letter". Statute doesn't apply if you've already been notified of the violation/penalty 15 years ago.

Thanks for doing that research. Very helpful.