By sometime this fall, your ability to register your automobile may depend on timely payment of Llano County fines, fees or auto sales tax.

Despite some reservations from officials on the enforcement end, Llano County Commissioners, Monday, seemed inclined to adopt a local scofflaw program aimed at collecting some $695,000 on 2,016 outstanding warrants. They will consider a streamlined resolution to that effect at their June 23 meeting.

A scofflaw, as the name implies, is a person who flouts the law by failing to comply with those difficult to enforce. The 75th Texas Legislature in 1997 enacted a section of the Texas Transportation Code designed to help counties deal with those difficulties through a freeze on auto registration.

Though it has been slow to find its way into government, a scofflaw program is up and running in the City of El Paso and it is being considered by at least six other counties, including Travis County.

The county’s first effort to collect on old judgments was the Statewide Warrant Roundup, which it joined in 2007. In its first year, the program netted about $42,000 on 149 warrants successfully processed and $31,000 on 86 cleared warrants this year.

Precinct 3 Commissioner Duane Stueven has been rankled by the fact that despite roundup efforts, $133,890 can be attributed to 383 outstanding warrants just across the river in Burnet County.

“We’re not going to collect it until we have this,” he said.

Stueven was a leader in placing Llano County among some 200 jurisdictions in the warrant roundup processing outstanding warrants from other participants on their local residents.

Now, Stueven has done the research on the feasibility of a local scofflaw program through the Texas Department of Transportation and he invited Russ Duncan, a regional collections specialist from the Texas Office of Court Administration, to discuss it with the court.

“Eight counties are doing it and more are coming on board,” said Duncan. “Money is getting tighter.”

He explained that when someone goes to register his vehicle he would find his name flagged if he has a warrant older than 120 days or some other outstanding fee or unpaid vehicle sales tax aging in the system.

In El Paso, where some $1.5 million has been collected from thousands of warrants through a system supported by eight employees, child support and curbstoning violators are forced to pay up as well.

Curbstoning is the practice of illegally selling vehicles on the street or at the curb by unlicensed car dealers who do not pay local, state or federal taxes, who may be selling stolen, damaged or salvage vehicles. “Curbstoners” may also be selling vehicles with a lien that has not been properly released or satisfied. In Texas it is illegal to sell more than five cars each year without a dealers license.

Duncan conceded to some potential problems, even though flags that follow vehicle identification numbers and license plate numbers are designed to tag individuals, not owners of vehicles in which a violation occurred or family members with similar names.

“The system is not perfect,” he said. “It has about a two percent error factor.”

He was responding to County Attorney Cheryll Mabray who gave an example of the frustrations of citizens she deals with through the courts who get notices of warrants while still waiting for trial and such.

“NetData (the county’s collection service that also would manage a scofflaw program) already is sending letters to people who have pled not guilty and are waiting for trial,” she said. “One of my big issues is the constitutionality of it. I am concerned from the non-guilty point of view. If I don’t show up for court, it doesn’t necessarily mean I am guilty. They won’t know until I go to court, but I can't register my car.”

County Tax Assessor Dexter Sagebiel said his employees already aim at defusing irate registrants who find they must contact a company and wait for a fax of proof of insurance.

As records of the flags would be reconciled with payment records just once a month, he wondered how frustrations might be compounded for people with a deadline to register their cars. That person must contact the place a warrant originated, pay by credit card and wait for a receipt. Or, they must return with a money order that a tax assessor’s office would have to send in before a car could be registered.

Mabray had several other concerns.

“If these are criminals and they are wanted, is Dexter and his staff supposed to call the cops?” she asked. “I think he has the duty to call the law and say we’ve got a criminal here.

“We have a lot dumped on us statutorily. Do we have enough to deal with?”

Precinct 4 Commissioner Jerry Don Moss felt enough remained to be learned about the program to justify waiting until it is more widely adopted to begin in Llano County.

“Llano County could be the guinea pig,” said Sagebiel. “We may have the very citizen willing to spend the many dollars it would take to challenge it.”

Mabray suggested a warrant officer program might be as effective as a scofflaw program for collections.

“When you are looking at $600,000 you need to make a concentrated effort,” said County Judge Wayne Brascom, who made the recommendation that Stueven return to the next session of the court with more streamlined verbiage to avoid conflicts with future changes in the law.

If a program is approved, Stueven said NetData anticipates being able to write software for flagging Llano County scofflaws in three or four months.