Do As I Say, Not As I Do

We have several toll roads here in Orange County and both of my cars have transponders that beep everytime the Transportation Agency takes a few bucks out of my wallet to use those roads. However, for some drivers, toll roads are not a problem at all:

It's 1:45 p.m. on a Wednesday in February and a Toyota Camry is driving west on the 91 Express Lanes, for free, for the 470th time.

The electronic transponder on the dashboard – used to bill tollway users – is inactive. The Camry's owners, airport traffic officer Rudolph Duplessis and his wife, Loretta, have never had a toll road account, officials say.

They've never received a violation notice in the mail, either. Their car is registered as part of a state program which hides their home address on Department of Motor Vehicles records. The agency that operates the tollway does not have legal access to their address.

Their Toyota is one of 996,716 vehicles registered to motorists who are affiliated with 1,800 state and local agencies and who are allowed to shield their addresses under the Confidential Records Program.

An Orange County Register investigation has found that the program, designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees – from police dispatchers to museum guards – who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too.

Changes in the State laws have now shielded all of us from improper scrutiny of our home addresses through license records, but this program has never been changed.

Some of the other big violators that were identified by The Orange County Register:

Among the top violators on OCTA's list were Dwight and Michell Storay (he's a parole agent with the Department of Corrections), with 622 violations; Lenai and Arnold Carraway (she's an Orange County social worker), with 239 violations and Susie and Mike Stephen (she's a Chino Police Department dispatcher), with 227 violations.

You can read the article for more information on the response from these people. However, it appears that they fully enjoyed the perks that came with what was effectively a "stealth" license plate. It's a nice perk if you can get it.