Originally published on January 22, 2021 3:09 pm
As of October last year, Oregon stopped automatically suspending people’s driver’s licenses if they didn’t pay a traffic citation in time. But previous suspensions are still in force.
Tracy Chavez of Bend has had her license suspended for over 26 years because of a traffic citation issued in Phoenix.
“That made it hard to find a job, to get her kids to where they needed to go, to go to the grocery store to buy food,” says her attorney, Emily Teplin Fox of the Oregon Law Center. “And like a lot of people, she accumulated additional fees and fines and saw the amounts she owed balloon.”