Brickbat: Texas Tag Trouble

North Richland Hills, Texas, residents Dale and Anne Smith received bills totaling $1,065 for unpaid tolls from the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA). The bills were for 11 different vehicles, none of which are owned by the Smiths. When they tried to clear the matter up, the NTTA told the Smiths it was up to them to prove they didn't own the cars. The Smiths even got the police involved. The cops found all of the license plate numbers on the bills sent to the Smiths were from temporary tags connected to an Arlington car dealership. But that wasn't enough for the NTTA. Finally, when a local newspaper began digging around on the story, the NTTA told the Smiths it was voiding their debt because it had discovered the vehicles belonged to someone else.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

The bills were for 11 different vehicles...

In addition to toll jumpers they were also thieves!

[Sometimes a Great Notion]

These are the tales of the Texas NTTA

[MoreFreedom]

Proof that Without More Accountability, Sunshine Laws Are Toothless. In this case, the accountability came from the MSM who embarrassed the government because the government shows it doesn't work.

Apparently, it's OK for the government to waste people's and money to deal with government mistakes. Seems to me if the government is requiring immunity for their mistakes, they should move the function to the free market, where you can sue a business for causing you harm via wasted time and money. Or more likely, the business will make it right to avoid a lawsuit, which is an option you don't have with the government.

[Longtobefree]

It’s Texas, Jake. Ride a horse!

[PMBug]

Dear NTTA, please repo the autos in question. I trust this will satisfy the debts as paid in full. YMMV

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

That would be interesting!

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

What? The media challenged a government agency narrative?

Sounds like a seditious rag that must be censored to protect democracy.

[Dillinger]

>>The Smiths even got the police involved.

a rush and a push and the land is ours.

[The Ignorant One]

Would have been nice to publish the name of the idiot bureaucrat in charge of the NTTA.

[LIBertrans]

Those stickers came into play thanks to convict labor. Felons doing time for twigs, seeds, leaves, late taxes, owing a gun, being brown and so forth routinely pissed into vats of license-plate paint at the prisons--so the story goes. Finally a large batch came out unusable, paint peeling off, so these stickers were the work around. As layers of them thickened, peeps would peel a stack off a parked car and glue it onto their own plates. Repealing victimless vice laws never crossed the hats of the Texas Legislature in its StateKlavern.

[AT]

You're such a jackass Chuck. You omitted the most important part to make your stupid forced "brickbat."

The police tracked the cars to an Arlington dealership, which buys vehicles from a man also named Dale Smith.

I mean, you could have easily made this a brickbat had you put any thought into it whatsoever. Because yea, the NTTA screwed up. But the brickbat should have been WHY they screwed up. Because they were too darned lazy to determine one Dale Smith from another.

In Texas.

This SHOULD have been about how they just went about checking their boxes with zero independent thought. But nah, you just phoned it in instead.

[Wizard4169]

Oh, Reason didn't frame a story exactly the way I'd like! That makes them the stupidest lying fucks ever!
Oh, my dog, the pointless butthurtness in the comments makes my frickin' brain hurt.

[AT]

Google the term: "bury the lede."

For once, Brickbat had a valid point. But he buried that.

Ask yourself why.