The News’ examination found that the methods Texas uses to criminally charge vehicle owners for unpaid toll road fees may stand on shaky legal ground.
Among other findings: Citations issued by the NTTA — which oversees five toll roads, two bridges and a tunnel in Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties — eclipse all other cases handled by some justices of the peace and municipal courts in North Texas, including evictions, debt collections and small claims disputes. To handle the backlog of cases, a Tarrant County judge toldTarrant Co.
Tarrant County Justice of the Peace Precinct 5 Sergio L. De Leon thumbs through some of the thousands of pending toll road pleas that are filling the filing cabinets at his Fort Worth Police Administration Building office in downtown Fort Worth, February 22, 2024. De Leon has been deluged with toll citations -- so much so that he has asked the Tarrant County Commissioners court for an additional clerk.
In 1989, North Texas was among the first communities in the country to contract with a company to manage an automatic cash payment system for tolls, according to news reports. In total, based on those figures, North Texas counties have lost more than $10.3 million in registration fees that their city leaders cannot collect because of vehicle blocks by toll operators, based on the average cost to register each vehicle, which is $60 in Texas.“I would find them tremendously out of date, items being billed to taxpayers who didn’t know it,” he said. “The car had already been sold one or two times. And, they didn’t clean anything up.
DePiazza scheduled two pretrial hearings for people who pleaded not guilty with the Denton County district attorney’s office in his court that day. One hearing was for a man who told DePiazza the NTTA had dismissed his charges in a bankruptcy he filed in 2021. Another hearing was for a man who said he had sold his car before the citation occurred. DePiazza told the man he needed to file a vehicle transfer notification within 30 days of the sale in order to clear the court citation.
This year, she said she’s already been stopped by police five times on her way home from work for an expired registration sticker. NTTA blocked her from renewing her car registration because she is a habitual violator. The status gives NTTA the authority to suspend drivers’ licenses, bar those drivers from using their tollways and impound their cars.They are hair stylists, bartenders, deployed military, single parents and grandmothers. They are small business owners and construction workers.