Cranston, RI 2/19/2020: Dennis G. Gerstmeyer, cq, the Court Administrator of the Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal, looks over boxes of unpaid tickets. This is for a story on state's effort to collect $29 million owed since 2000. Suzanne Kreiter/Globe StaffSuzanne Kreiter/Globe staff
PROVIDENCE â A year after the stateâs new collection agency began pursuing $29 million in 20-year-old traffic fines, it has recouped a little more than $367,000 â about 1.26 percent of the delinquent debt.
The old debts are holdovers from an embarrassing chapter in Rhode Island, when the former traffic court known as the Administrative Adjudication Court was so poorly run in the 1990s that thousands of unpaid tickets filled boxes stacked to the ceiling.