If Gov. Tim Pawlenty has his way, it’ll cost Minnesotans an extra $10 each time they get nabbed for speeding. Or murdering someone.

That’s the anticipated effect of the latest bright idea to raise desperately needed state revenue without increasing taxes, this time by imposing a $10 surcharge on traffic tickets and criminal convictions. And with few legislators willing to stick their necks out to defend the rights of traffic scofflaws, let alone career criminals, it sounds like an easy source of cash. Break the law and pay up. Who’s going to argue with that?

Well, it may not be as simple as it seems, beginning with the idea of lumping lead-footers into the same category as lead-shooters. Whether rightly or wrongly, any number of otherwise law-abiding citizens get traffic tickets, and those who did since last year got socked with a $25 surcharge increase on top of an existing surcharge, bringing the fee to $60. The state’s general treasury gets the bulk of that &045; $50, with $9.75 going to a special fund for police training and 25 cents to similar training for Department of Natural Resources employees.

With cars being the primary transportation for most Minnesotans, most speeders would have little choice but to ante up the extra bucks, even when it adds up to triple digits. Hardened criminals, however, may not be good for the money, especially if they’re looking at jail time where the state ends up supporting them. There are exceptions, but many are indigent and, if their cases are tried, they depend on public defenders for their legal representation. How many will be able to come up with the fee? Who’s going to collect it, and from whom? Will the state send letters asking people to pay up? What will they do to people who refuse, arrest them?

To be sure, fines are a legitimate and appropriate penalty for some criminal behavior, but it starts feeling a little bit uncomfortable if a society starts to bank on a crime wave to fill the government’s coffers.

There’s one solution Pawlenty may not have thought of (offered here as a very modest proposal): Instead of adding a surcharge for murder, mayhem, highway robbery, nonhighway robbery, burglary or prevarication (well maybe not that), why not go all the way and offer the bad guys the opportunity to skip jail in exchange for paying off a significant portion of the state’s debt?

Hey, it worked in Charles Dickens’ Merry Old England and in medieval times, too. Of course, they had the rack and the screw for those who didn’t pay.

&045; Duluth News Tribune