Mayor Bloomberg Comes to His Senses and Drops the Accident Tax April 11, 2011

Last fall, the Bloomberg Administration announced plans to charge motorists involved in car accidents for emergency response services. After much criticism, especially from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., the Mayor has decided to drop the idea.

Good riddance to a bad idea. Mayor Bloomberg cited other cities, which have begun charging for emergency services. As I tell my children, just because someone else does it, doesn’t make something a good idea. In this case, the City would have established three tiers of fees: 

• $495 for a vehicle fire with injuries
• $415 for a vehicle fire without injuries
• $365 for responding when there was no fire or injuries

 The City projected this fee arrangement would have generated $1 million in annual revenues.

 This plan was wrong-headed from the beginning. As Christine Quinn and others pointed out, emergency response is a basic government function and we do not charge for basic functions – such as putting out fires or police rescues. As a flat government fee – a form of taxation – this plan would have been regressive in nature, placing a greater burden on poor New Yorkers.

This plan fit into a larger trend of charging citizens for the government services they use. While there is some natural appeal – why should someone who does not use a service pay for it – the concept undermines the concept of the communal good. There are certain resources and services that we as a community share. We collectively benefit from these services and we collectively own and pay for these services. It is easy to think of police and fire services as shared communal services. Schools fit into this category too. I think maintaining the streets and the parks should qualify. Increasingly, we are pulling services out, charging for them and restricting their use to those who pay for them. In a tight fiscal environment, it may seem like a good idea to charge for the use of parks, to have parents of school children pay more for school services. Every time we do this, we destroy a little more of our communal bonds. We may save some money now, but we damage our society and that price makes fee arrangements like Mayor Bloomberg’s accident tax a bad idea.

I welcome your comments.

Carol L. Schlitt
New York Personal Injury Attorney
www.SchlittLaw.com
http://nylawthoughts.com 
1-800-660-1466
Carol@SchlittLaw.com