7/30/2006
New York: DUI Program Desperate for CashCayuga County, New York anti-drunk driving program focuses on ways to recover lost revenue.
Cayuga County, New York's anti-drunk driving program generated $250,000 in profit in 2001 and funded expenditures for extra radar guns, equipment for the sheriff's department and police salaries. This year, however, arrests are down by a third over 2005, and the program is struggling to maintain the same level of revenue generation. There have been 98 arrests through May this year compared to 135 in the same period last year. The lack of arrests has caused budget problems.
"There's a lack of fine collecting; we need a better strategy," the STOP-DWI program's executive director, Lloyd Hoskins, told the Auburn Citizen newspaper.
Officials in Cayuga County are deeply concerned about the lost revenue and are looking for ways to maximize collection of overdue fines and reworking the public relations budget to recover some of the lost profit.