Update: The D.C. Council unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that allows residents who owe more than $100 to the local government get a driver’s license or renew an existing one. The bill, which reforms the city’s “Clean Hands” law, now goes to the mayor for her signature.

An amendment that sought to address traffic safety concerns failed to pass in a 9 to 4 vote. The amendment would have continued to apply “Clean Hands” to people who have multiple fines for select moving violations.

One of the councilmembers who introduced the amendment, Christina Henderson (At-Large), expressed hope at the legislative meeting that the body could revisit traffic safety and said that she’s already drafting something to that effect. But another of the amendment’s co-sponsors, Charles Allen (Ward 6), sounded less optimistic, pointing out that some provisions of Vision Zero — the citywide effort to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries by 2024 — have not been funded or implemented. A third co-introducer, Breanne Nadeau (Ward 1), ended up voting against her own amendment because she was ultimately moved by advocates who said it undermined the bill’s intent, which is to end a system that disproportionately impacts working class people.

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A D.C. resident is not able to get a driver’s license or renew an existing one if they owe more than $100 to the local government. A bill introduced by Ward 5 Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie would amend the city’s “Clean Hands” law, so residents could get a driver’s license even if they are in debt to the government. He says the bill would reduce racial inequity because Black residents are disproportionately impacted by fines and fees.

But the bill that’s up for a final vote on Tuesday, called the “Clean Hands Certification Equity Amendment Act of 2022,” has come under scrutiny. Several councilmembers are concerned about reducing the penalty for residents who are ticketed for moving violations, particularly during a time of increased traffic deaths and injuries. The communities that shoulder government debt also have borne the brunt of traffic deaths.

The Council is in overall agreement that the Clean Hands law needs to be changed, sympathizing with residents who cannot afford to pay parking tickets and thus cannot renew their driver’s licenses. Tickets can easily stack up – parking in a loading zone, for example, can result in up to a $100 fine.

Consider Ward 8 resident Carlotta Mitchell, who is 70. She hasn’t been able to renew her driver’s license since 2014 because she owes $660 in tickets and fines, according to her written testimony to the Council – all of which she accumulated from expired tags while she was homeless and slept in her car. Without a license, she struggles to attend church or get to the grocery store. Grocery stores are harder to get to from where Mitchell lives: Nearly half of the District’s food deserts are in Ward 8  – in late 2021, they opened just their second full-service grocery store.

“Getting that license for so many people is a pathway to doing life – essential life activities – getting to a job, keeping a job, laundry, childcare, groceries, visiting loved ones,” says Ariel Levinson-Waldman, the founder of Tzedek DC, a legal group that advocates for low-income residents in debt-related matters. “There are tens of thousands of residents who cannot do that, lawfully,” he says.

His organization explains the outsized harm of the Clean Hands law to working-class Black residents because of structural racism in a report released last year. Nearly all of the fines and forfeitures the D.C. government collects every year comes from parking and traffic tickets, according to the report, and Black drivers are disproportionately ticketed. It shows that Black residents are also less likely than their white counterparts to have the financial assets to pay the fines and fees, and white D.C. households have 81 times more wealth than Black ones do.

Separately, a Washington Post analysis of traffic tickets found that 62 percent of all the fines from automated systems and police were issued in majority-Black neighborhoods where the average median household income is below $50,000.

The Council’s Office of Racial Equity says the bill “will likely improve a portion of quality of life outcomes for Black residents in the District.”

People still drive without a license, risking criminal charges and jail time. In 2019, D.C. police made 2,797 adult arrests where the most serious offense was driving without a license, according to Tzedek’s report. Tzedek, along with 31 other local organizations including Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington and the ACLU of the District of Columbia, have advocated for reform of the Clean Hands law.

“Three years ago, D.C. was a leader nationwide on this issue by ending the automatic immediate suspension of driver’s licenses for unpaid debt,” says an April 2021 letter by the several dozen organizations. “Now, the District is a national and regional outlier, one of just a handful of jurisdictions that cling to the harmful, outdated approach of automatically denying license renewals as punishment for unpaid fines and fees.”

In 2018, the Council ended the government’s practice of suspending driver’s licenses due to unpaid fines and fees. Consequently, over 15,500 D.C. residents had their driver’s licenses restored. Neighboring states have gone further in ending debt-related restrictions on driving privileges. Maryland does not suspend or revoke driver’s licenses or deny renewals for unpaid traffic violations, but continues for unpaid criminal fines and fees, while Virginia ended the practice for all unpaid fines and fees.

The Council nearly-unanimously voted in favor of McDuffie’s bill in late June. However, several councilmembers, including Christina Henderson (At-Large) and Charles Allen (Ward 6), voted on the condition that McDuffie would work with them to address traffic safety concerns. Taking away an enforcement tool when the city already struggles to enforce traffic laws could put the public at higher risk of dangerous drivers, they noted.

“What is the consequence of speeding in this city?” said Henderson during the June 28 legislative meeting just before voting “Yes.”

D.C. uses a point system for moving violations as a way to deter drivers from dangerous behavior. Drivers are at risk of having their licenses suspended or revoked under the point system. McDuffie’s bill would not impact the point system. However, several councilmembers take issue with the system’s ineffectiveness. Points, for example, are not assessed for parking and photo tickets.

Police do not regularly enforce traffic laws. Reformists also want to end the practice entirely. An independent commission appointed by the Council recommended that the city’s Department of Transportation start enforcing traffic violations “that do not imminently threaten public safety” because police stops can escalate and shift resources away from violent crimes.

Traffic laws are also enforced through towing and booting. But because D.C. has cited so many vehicles with multiple unpaid tickets and has too few booting crews, it would take 25 years for all eligible vehicles in the backlog to be booted. Of the 550,000 vehicles eligible to be booted, roughly 5,000 have tickets for traveling at least 21 mph over the speed limit and another 150,000 for running a red light.

McDuffie says he understands his colleagues’ concerns because he too is worried about traffic safety. He recalls visiting the family of Allison Hart, a 5-year-old girl who was killed last year by a driver while riding her bike in a crosswalk. However, McDuffie questions whether the Clean Hands law is the best way to enforce traffic laws. Other enforcement measures need reforming, he and others noted.

“The Clean Hands requirement, first and foremost, was not designed to be a tool for public safety. Rather, it was a tool that was implemented for collecting revenue,” McDuffie tells DCist/WAMU. “

The Council added fines related to parking and moving violations to the Clean Hands law in 2001, a time when the government was trying to end the reign of the Congress-imposed financial control board. According to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, parking and traffic violations accounted for 99.1% of fines and forfeitures in fiscal year 2020, 98.6% in FY2019, and 98.7% in FY2018. Parking violations have generated the most revenue, says David Umansky, the CFO’s public affairs officer.

Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh voted present during the first reading of McDuffie’s bill, after having co-sponsored a previous version of it. She is interested in moving forward with an amendment during the second and final reading of the bill that would hold drivers on the hook for specific moving violations. The amendment — offered by Cheh, Allen, Henderson and Ward 1 Councilmember Breanne Nadeau and shared with DCist/WAMU — would let residents get driver’s licenses provided they have “fewer than 3 unpaid tickets for speeding, failure to stop at a red light or stop sign, or passing a stopped school bus that are not eligible for appeal.”

Cheh acknowledges that having the city deny driver’s license renewals for moving violations, but not parking, adds administrative difficulties. But she believes it is worth it given Clean Hands is one of a few enforcement tools the city has. “Maybe we’re not going to get everybody, but at least we’ll get the people that we can get,” says Cheh. “It’s no answer to solving the problem to say, ‘Well you’re not solving the whole thing.’ It may be all we can do at the moment to solve part of it.”

While McDuffie’s bill doesn’t expunge people of their debt, Cheh says she is also concerned about people not being compelled to pay fines and fees because other licenses that apply under Clean Hands (related to business, government contracts, or local grants) won’t motivate them as much. “It’s not going to be a deterrent if people get these tickets, and they double. They don’t give a damn. They could pay them, but they don’t have to because they know that there’ll be no consequences.”

Levinson-Waldman of Tzedek believes Cheh’s amendment will present practical obstacles, and, more importantly, will undermine the overall progress of the bill. “The reason it’s not a good idea to make that big carve out is that it would just continue this two-tier system of justice that we’ve got right now,” he says. “It says that people who can make the payment are not going to be shut out of the system. People who can’t make the payment are going to continue to be shut out of the system and not be able to access this basic activity of key essential life activity in D.C. Two out of 3 jobs in our region require a car to get there in less than an hour and a half.”

Tzedek and other organizations demanding reform have emailed councilmembers, calling on them to vote against Cheh’s “well-intentioned” amendment. The “implicit assumption” of the amendment is “that D.C. residents with less wealth somehow pose a higher risk than residents with funds to pay” the email says. “The overlay of that implicit assumption with D.C.’s current racial disparities in wealth and D.C.’s over-policing of Brown and Black D.C. neighborhoods is very concerning here.”

Councilmembers offering the amendment disagree, arguing the carve out comprehensively considers equity issues without sacrificing traffic safety. “Of note, the three or more ticket threshold would mean that Clean Hands requirements are triggered in instances where the infractions could have prompted the revocation or suspension of their license, should the tickets have incurred points,” lawmakers say in the amendment they circulated Monday afternoon.

It’s unclear how many people cannot renew their driver’s licenses because of parking violations versus moving violations. The Departments of Motor Vehicles deferred DCist/WAMU’s questions to the Freedom of Information Act process. According to the DMV’s oversight report to the Council, there were 837,899 parking citations processed and 53,929 moving citations processed by law enforcement in fiscal year 2020, and 1,306,689 photo citations processed that same year.

Several experts DCist/WAMU spoke with declined to speculate on the effects McDuffie’s bill would have on traffic safety. Erick Guerra, a transportation researcher with the University of Pennsylvania, says the literature on enforcement confirms this leg of the stool’s importance to safety, along with the built in environment of communities, but cannot definitively say what type works best.

“We’re in a relatively dangerous moment with traffic fatalities, tending to move in the wrong direction. And from that perspective, it is somewhat worrying if there’s the potential to reduce the impacts of one of the tools that we have to make safety gains,” says Guerra. But he also acknowledges the racial and economic inequities of the current fines and fees structure, favoring proportional ticketing like Nordic countries have instead.

This story has been updated to include Councilmember Cheh’s finalized amendment, and the final vote of the bill.