Originally Posted by
giemsa
Turns out I just found this article dated May 25, 2022 entitled "City of San Mateo exploring tax increases: Higher property transfer and sales taxes under consideration by city council" ... "San Mateo is considering introducing a ballot measure ... to raise revenue for city infrastructure projects. 'Unfortunately, we are so limited in our power to generate revenue,' Councilmember Joe Goethals said. 'These are the only opportunities, and I worry about those shortfalls that are around the corner.'" Since I can't post links you can Google it. On other boards there are recent threads about BS fines near San Mateo too. I'd say these facts are supportive of the conjecture
...most certainly this varies by locality, but generally traffic violation fines do not go directly to city general funds, to be used for whatever. You can Google this yourself with some phrase like "how does
My City use traffic fine revenues ?"
See
this, and
this one. This report by the California State Auditor's office, back in 2018, has had some positive effects in reducing the abuses that did exist in various jurisdictions here in California. But no place is perfect.
This report concludes that California’s current approach to funding state and county programs through penalties and fees from criminal and traffic violations has proven problematic both for the programs that rely on those funds and for drivers who receive costly citations. Specifically, penalties and fees intended to help pay for various programs were added to state law in a piecemeal fashion over time, and the resulting revenue has been inconsistent. Although these penalties and fees generate more than $450 million annually for numerous state funds, the revenue is derived from penalty and fee amounts that do not appear to be based on the needs of the funded programs. Further, the revenue collected from penalties and fees is trending downward, creating challenges for many of the programs that rely on this revenue to provide services. For example, penalty and fee revenues for state funds have decreased by 14 percent to 25 percent over the last three years. Many of these funds rely on penalties for 50 percent or more of their annual revenue. These penalties and fees also create a financial burden on drivers, particularly low-income individuals who may be unable to pay them. In fact, the cost of certain traffic offenses increase six-fold after the penalties and fees are included. Further, many of the penalties are paying for programs that are not directly related to the traffic offenses for which they are incurred. To address the problematic nature of the current funding approach, the Legislature would need to make public policy decisions about whether and to what extent to fund the programs currently receiving penalty and fee revenue. We provide recommendations of possible approaches to address the concerns we identified.