September 23, 2002
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Government and The Committee Effect
Here are two shining examples of how the Committee Effect makes working with government such a pleasure. Today, the glorious state government of New Jersey is in the crosshairs:
First, the E-Z Pass system manages to send penalty notices to drivers without passes going through the E-X Pass lanes....with at least a 68% error rate. I know for a fact this is undercounted, as several of my friends get a penalty notice every time they go through one particular Turnpike exit. When they receive the notice, however, they can never get through to E-Z Pass before the due date (try it sometime). They've paid the fine so as to not make a court appearance.
Despite these gratuitous payments, the state stopped sending notices on July 15 and found that cheaper than sending them out and collecting the 32% who eventually paid, with or without cause. That explains why we didn't get any when my wife's E-Z Pass went on the fritz in mid-summer.
Moving right along, the brilliant legislative body of New Jersey has decided to pass a law confiscating idle balances in banks (known as "escheat", I believe) after three years instead of ten. The purpose was to get hold of an estimated $209 million to balance the budget. The government claims this tax in sheep's clothing is for the benefit of the account holders.
One simple problem: They forgot to allow for CDs of greater than ten year maturity, so banks are sending out notices to holders of these instruments who are then reacting with understandable outrage. Apparently the desperate lawmakers passed the law so fast they never put the wording out for comment.
Like I said, dumb as a bag of rocks.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at September 23, 2002 6:51 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links