NY could crack down on license plate covers, toll dodgers

Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders say they want to crack down on the increasingly bold ways New York drivers are obscuring their license plates to avoid automated tolls, speeding tickets and red-light camera fines on the state’s roads and bridges.

But they haven’t been able to agree on how exactly to do it.

Toll evasion is one of the many remaining issues tripping up Hochul and top lawmakers in Albany as they continue to meet behind closed doors to negotiate a state budget that’s already 10 days late. The budget was due prior to April 1, the start of the state’s fiscal year.

Toll evasion is costly for the state, which, since 2020, has relied entirely on camera-based systems to bill motorists as they drive on toll roads or cross toll bridges and tunnels.

In 2022, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — just one of a handful of agencies or authorities that collect tolls — estimated it lost $46 million from drivers who dodged bridge and tunnel tolls in New York City. And the problem could soon get significantly worse: The authority is gearing up to roll out a congestion toll on drivers who enter Manhattan south of 60th Street in June.

“The level of total evasion is concerning to everyone,” state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Yonkers Democrat, told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.

As part of her $233 billion budget proposal, Hochul, a Democrat, wants to boost penalties for drivers who deliberately evade New York’s tolls, often by applying a film or cover to their license plates to block them from the view of overhead cameras designed to read them. She also wants to make toll evasion a “theft of services” misdemeanor, similar to hopping a subway turnstile.

The governor also wants to allow police to seize objects used to obscure license plates and ban the sale of “vanish plates,” which are covers that can be deployed with the push of a button.

“We're going to catch the bad actors, stop them and deter the use of these bogus and covered plates, enhanced penalties, and make sure that people who think they're invincible today will be stopped tomorrow,” Hochul said at a joint press conference with New York City Mayor Eric Adams in March.

Although many Democratic lawmakers are generally averse to hiking penalties, they have been willing to negotiate when it comes to license plate covers, in particular. But they’re pushing Hochul to support measures that would cap late fees and make it easier for drivers to contest tolls if they feel they’ve been wrongly charged. Versions of these measures were included in a bill the governor vetoed in 2022.

“There is a very solid conversation about toll evasion and what can and should be done, and what penalties, etcetera,” Stewart-Cousins said. “And in the same vein, there's a conversation about trying to make it a little bit easier for people who have felt that they have been wrongfully charged.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, last week listed toll evasion among a handful of major issues still being negotiated as part of the budget, though he didn’t get into specifics.

Assemblymember Kenny Burgos, a Bronx Democrat, said there really are two separate issues Hochul and lawmakers need to tackle.

The first is drivers who are willfully evading tolls by covering their license plates. The second, he said, is an administrative issue: Late fees are being issued to drivers who never saw a bill in the first place.

“One is an enforcement problem, where people are deliberately avoiding [the toll],” Burgos said. “The other one is an administrative problem where people are just not being billed correctly. There are many stories of people not even receiving their toll bills. We’ve even had state lawmakers who have run into E-ZPass problems.”

Burgos and state Sen. Leroy Comrie, a Queens Democrat, sponsored a bill known as the Toll Payer Protection Act, which Hochul vetoed in 2022. Among other things, it would require the MTA, Port Authority and Thruway Authority to send a toll bill by mail within 30 days, and it would set up concrete procedures for a driver to appeal.

In budget talks, Comrie said he’s pushing for measures that will make it easier for drivers to figure out how much they owe in tolls without having to check in with four different state entities. He said there are “ongoing discussions” on penalties for people with fake or covered license plates.

“There's a real problem with people that are faking license plates and putting covers on,” he said. “There's also a real problem with people that have run into trouble because they didn't realize that their accounts got changed. So we're trying to bridge that fine line.”

As it stands, the MTA charges a $5 fee for a toll that isn’t paid within 30 days of being billed. After 60 days, that increases to $50 or $100. The Thruway Authority charges a $5 late fee for tolls that aren't paid on time, which escalates to $50 per monthly bill if the driver misses a second deadline.

Burgos said he wants to see late fees set to a maximum of $25 and capped, so that drivers won't continue accumulating fees after they reach a certain amount.

Burgos said he would like to see the creation of an amnesty program, where drivers can work with the authorities to settle their outstanding bills at a reduced rate. He acknowledged it likely wouldn't be part of any state budget deal, though he said it could come up later in the legislative session that ends in June.

Meanwhile, there were few signs on Wednesday of Hochul and legislative leaders getting any closer to a handshake deal on the budget, which has now been late during each of the governor’s three years in office.

Hochul was in Manhattan in the morning for the National Action Network’s conference, and is slated to head to the White House later in the day for the state dinner with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

On Tuesday, Stewart-Cousins said they were at “the beginning of the end” of budget negotiations.

“But the end is hard,” she added.