Minnesota attorney general tells Illinois tollway to stop ticketing

Minnesota drivers have been receiving erroneous fines for allegedly blowing off tolls in Illinois, prompting Minnesota's attorney general to call on tollway officials to get the system fixed or stop sending out-of-state notices.

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson says her office has received numerous complaints from residents hit with fines - that can easily amount to hundreds of dollars - for scofflaws tagged to cars they didn't own at the time they were photographed not paying Illinois tolls.

"It is unfair for the tollway to place the burden on Minnesota citizens to correct the errors of a faulty system," Swanson said in the letter to Gov. Pat Quinn and tollway officials.

Tollway officials are in talks with Swanson to work on a solution. Spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis said the agency had not taken any action as of late Thursday to stop sending notices to Minnesota residents or to rescind old fines per Swanson's request.

"We certainly will respond to problems or concerns raised by other state officials," she said. "The staff needs to discuss what the process is and how to respond."

The mix-ups apparently occur because the tollway tracks down the owners of vehicles using databases purchased from a third-party vendor that are not the most up-to-date. In Minnesota, unlike Illinois, a vehicle's license plate follows the car and not the owner.

Swanson supplied documentation from a dozen motorists in her state caught up with erroneous fines and provided accounts of harassment from collection agencies.

McGinnis said tollway officials have been aware of problems with Minnesota notices and has tried to resolve the issue.

She said the tollway learned of a problem with one Minnesota motorist in March. After that, they decided to make appeals easier by dropping internal rules that required drivers to prove who owned the car at the time of the alleged infractions.

For Minnesota residents currently dealing with erroneous fines, McGinnis said an appeal by mail should clear up the problem.

"This is why we have the appeals process in there," she said.

Still, it is clear that is not the solution Swanson wants.

"Allowing a citizen to object to an improperly-issued ticket should not be a substitute for ensuring that tickets are properly issued to the correct owner in the first place," Swanson wrote in her letter.

The condemnation from a top Minnesota official comes as the tollway is working to repair its image following considerable problems with the electronic violation system, which sends notices to those not paying tolls in I-PASS lanes by taking pictures of the offending vehicle's license plate.

In 2007 the tollway disclosed it had not sent out violation notices for 13 months, accumulating a backlog of millions of scofflaws.

Once it began sending out those notices, problems with the system became evident as people who thought they were using I-PASS correctly began receiving fines for thousands of dollars.

Drivers can lose their license if they don't pay the fines.

Many of the problems were detailed in a 2008 Daily Herald investigative series, Toll Gridlock.

A few weeks ago, tollway officials reversed course on refusing reform measures and decided to institute a break on fines. The amnesty program will last until June 30. The tollway also agreed to approve rule changes that would prevent such a massive backlog from accumulating in the future.