DeKalb ticket strike ends

“The slowdown is over and we have seen an uptick of tickets,” she told county commissioners. “It’s more than we can handle.”

In December, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found the county lost more than $5 million due to a ticket strike by DeKalb Police. Protesting mandated furlough days, officers wrote about 42,500 fewer or about 33 percent less tickets in 2010 compared to 2009.

Now, furlough days are a bygone issue and ticket-writing is back in full force. But the county can’t fully take advantage of the surging revenue stream.

“There is no way to do it, besides literally hiring three times the number of employees we have,” Withers said.

Last month, the County Commission rejected a property tax increase and cut $33.6 million from the 2011 budget, including $358,440 (or 8.9 percent), from Recorders Court.

In response, the court laid off seven temporary workers who were inputting the tickets into the computer system, Withers said. Another five vacant positions were frozen in the budget.

“We had to cut back on the temps, who were doing data entry. The result is a backlog of about 2,000 citations a week, or two days a week of work,” she said.

In addition to the new wave of tickets that were coming in, those workers were also processing a backlog of 100,000 citations that need to be converted to warrants. That translates to more revenue on hold.

The 100,000-citation backlog is down from 500,000 last April.

In addition to staff shortages, the traffic court -- the largest in Georgia in terms of volume -- is waiting for a fourth courtroom to be built. The county already approved funding last year.

That space crunch at the courthouse has generated a backlog of 30,000 trials, which Withers estimated could bring in another $4-$6 million.

“It’s just a function of not having enough space,” Withers told commissioners.

Commissioner Lee May, chairman of the budget committee, said they are considering increasing funding for the traffic court, but he wants to see a more detailed analysis of projected revenue.

The court has said it expects to bring in $16 million for the county this year. Thus far, the court has brought in about $6.7 million, records show.

“I think they will generate more revenue than they anticipate because the ticket strike is over,” May said.

In 2010, the court cleared 150,000 cases and took in $29 million. The state collected about $9 million of that revenue.

Even with the ticket strike, that sum was more revenue than the court had ever collected, Withers said.

As an alternative to adding more courtrooms, court officials said they hope to increase revenue by adding three additional electronic kiosks at malls and other public places to allow drivers to pay tickets with credit cards.

Withers, who took over as chief judge in January 2010, inherited the court after 11 employees were indicted in a ticket-fixing scheme and a grand jury report found the court failed to collect millions of dollars in fines. For seven years, DeKalb did not issue warrants for people who didn’t show up for court and no records were ever sent to Driver Services or the Georgia Crime Information Center.