Photo by afagen

Dear Maryland Motorist,

Hi! We hope your day is going wonderfully. We’ve also got something we need to talk about. It might be a little uncomfortable, but it’s time this got addressed—you owe us money. A lot of it.

Our Department of Motor Vehicles recently ran the numbers, and in the 2012 Fiscal Year D.C. handed out over $285 million worth of traffic citations. That’s over three million parking, moving and traffic camera citations, up from 2.6 million the year prior. Whether it’s because we’re just good at finding scofflaw drivers or because scofflaw drivers just make it easy to get caught, we’re pleasantly surprised with our performance.

Still, not all is well in the world. Of that $285 million in tickets, $101 million is outstanding—491,080 tickets are unpaid, all told. You, dear Maryland motorist, are responsible for $43 million of that. Now before you go and say that Virginians are also to blame, know that we’ll be sending them a letter too. But even then, they’re only on the hook for $19 million worth of tickets. Also, this isn’t a one-time thing. In 2011, you owed us $34 million worth of unpaid tickets. And in what has already passed of Fiscal 2013, you’re in for $17 million.

We’re asking nicely. For now. But for every month that we have to wait, we might start getting creative. Don’t be surprised to see the D.C. line move a few blocks north of Western Avenue into Bethesda, for one. Plenty of revenue there. Maybe we’ll just take Six Flags in Prince George’s County and give D.C. residents priority on all the fun rides. Or National Harbor? Oh yeah, it’ll be ours soon enough.

Or you could, you know, pay those tickets. Your call.

Regards,

D.C.

From left to right, unpaid citations for FY 2011, 2012 and current 2013.