Although a few lawmakers might want to, it’s hard to argue with Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s point about drivers’ license suspensions. The commonwealth takes a person’s license when he or she fails to pay court-imposed fines and court costs. The result, in many cases, is that offenders lose their only feasible means of getting to work to earn the money to pay those bills. “It makes no sense,” the governor says.
He’s right. And he’s also right to advocate a change in the threshold for grand larceny. It has remained at $200 since 1980. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $586 today. But the General Assembly has refused to raise the threshold out of a fear that doing so might make legislators look soft on crime. The Assembly should make the financial adjustments
Del. Rob Bell, a Republican, claims such an adjustment would amount to a cost-of-living increase for thieves. Give him points for rhetorical flair — but take them back again for sophistry, because his argument gets the issue precisely backward.
Adjusting the felony threshold for inflation does not give thieves latitude to steal more; the failure to raise it makes felonies out of ever-smaller crimes. When he argues against adjusting the threshold, what Bell really means is that the constant-dollar level for grand larceny should now be only $68 — and that, assuming only 2 percent inflation, it should fall to $55 a decade from now, and $45 a decade after that.
