S’ton moves to correct ticket error

If you are one of the unfortunate souls to have received a traffic violation citation anywhere in the state of South Carolina, it is likely that you did not know that it is not a huge money making operation.

In fact, 65 percent (approximately) of each citation goes to the state coffers for use in the state Department of Public Safety. Another seven percent goes in the Victim Advocate Fund.

In an early January audit of the books in Summerton, it was discovered that the previous administrator had not been forwarding the state’s portion of each citation to the State Treasurer.

“When this was discovered we immediately set new policies and procedures in place to prevent this in the future,” said Mayor Jay Bruner. “We also contacted the State Treasurer to set up a plan to pay this money down.”

According to Bruner, the unpaid state apportionment was a little over $200,000 last January.

“Those were the funds due from 2009 traffic tickets,” Bruner explained. “We are current on state’s portion of tickets for 2010 and we have paid down what was due in 2009 to about $150,000.”

Bruner said that he believes that this was an error by the previous administrator who was reallocating funds that should have been sent to the state to other budget line items.

“We now have policies and procedures that will prevent this from ever happening again,” Bruner said. “We are working very hard to correct this error.