Ohio Village Finds System To Replace Mayor's Court Fines

A central Ohio village that lost a major part of its revenue stream when the state abolished mayor's courts for some small villages has a new system for collecting money from traffic fines.

The Franklin County village of Brice has installed a "civil-violations system," in which fines are meant to be paid directly to the village. Police have written more than 1 thousand traffic citations, some for as much as 15 hundred dollars under the new system. Some drivers and others are questioning the system adopted a few months after state lawmakers stripped mayor's courts from Brice and six other Ohio villages that were almost solely supported by traffic tickets.