Ever hear of MSB “A Private Corporation?” Well neither had I, until walking to my mail box this morning. MSB stands for Municipal Surcharge Bureau. MSB is basically a group of outsourced bureaucrats working as collection agents for the Department of Public Safety, and the State of Texas. As best as I can determine, they are currently responsible for the collection of ticket surcharges on infractions such as, driving with an expired license or without a license, driving without insurance, or driving under the influence (DUI). One to three of these infractions entitle the state charge the “Offender” with a surcharge every three years. And by the way, this “Private Corporation” has aspirations far beyond its current collections role. Their website claims the following as their vision: “[To Become the] Receivables Management Solutions for Every Government in: every city, every county, every state.” Reading about these cats makes me reflect on Douglas Adams description of the Vogons in his classic work “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy!” “Vogons are described as mindlessly bureaucratic, aggressive, having as much sex appeal as a road accident… They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy – not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous.” I trust my reader perceives my hostility at this point.

As you may have guessed I recentlyreceived a ticket for driving on an expired license. I wrote about my experience in an article for this site several months ago. http://www.tylertxdirectory.com/8936/getting-pulled-over-in-tyler-texas-again/ First off, I was charged more by the city than I was led to believe I would be by the officer who gave me the ticket. Ok fine I’ll just pay the ticket and be done with it. When I had paid up all my charges, and gotten everything current, I was enormously relieved. One less thing to worry about right? Wrong! A walk to my mail box today dispelled my happy delusion. Turns out, now that I had paid the city, the state wants its kick- back. At first I wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a scam. Well it is a scam but… Upon talking to others who had already encountered this organization, I heard stories of people being fined without their knowledge, ever growing penalties as a result of inadequate notification, and even warrants issued for the arrest of citizens who believed they had paid their tickets!

The Driver Responsibility Program, (sounds nice huh), was put into law in 2003. But the whole “Surcharge” nonsense is just another shameless project to squeeze more revenue out of the citizenry! And what’s worse the rules are so unclear, as to make it a sliding scale. No one really understands the fees, so who can tell if they’re being over charged? So what do we do? I don’t know. I guess we can start by calling our congressman, and trying to make the issue visible enough to find someone willing to vote for repeal. The hard thing is to find a politician willing to divest his office of funds, especially if he or she can collect them in the name of “Driver Responsibility.” I guess for now, I’m out another one hundred four dollars. Enjoy it DPS, but you’d better use it to put gas in an officer’s car or something. God knows that’s where it was going before I sent it to you!