Lt. Larry Guglietta of the Burrillville Police Department shows a sample e-ticket that he printed out from his cruiser’s computer. The Burrillville Police Department, the State Police and five other towns in the state now have the e-ticket.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

CRANSTON — Augustus Peah came from Providence to pay a fine, but there was one problem: he’d forgotten his ticket. Not so long ago, he would have had to go home and retrieve it. But today, the state Traffic Tribunal can handle such problems with ease.

Peah scribbled his name and birth date on a piece of paper and handed it to the clerk. She turned to her computer and clicked away. He handed her a credit card, she handed back a receipt, and he was on his way to the parking lot.

The whole process took about five minutes.

“It was very easy,” Peah said after paying his $230 fine for having an improperly registered car. “They only thing is the tickets are getting expensive. But the process is easy.”

For some, this Traffic Tribunal — with mosaic trees on the wall, bright hallways, abundant cashiers and ample parking — is the only one they’ve ever known.

But for those who remember the old state traffic court — dark, dusty and a stone’s throw from a Providence strip club, it’s obvious the court has vastly improved.

“It’s not your grandfather’s Traffic Tribunal, anymore,” said Chief Magistrate William R. Guglietta. “We have a brand new court facility and we’re on the edge of technology for the judiciary of Rhode Island. It’s nice to see the Traffic Tribunal ahead of the curve for the first time in a long time.”

The changes are evident with a walk through the spacious $19-million building, off New London Avenue, that opened in January 2007. Through one door is the scanning machine that allows employees to store tickets electronically. All courtrooms are wired for recording equipment; one has a projection system where the court can show a motorist a video of certain violations, such as their car speeding past a school bus. A computer lab on the first floor is used to train staffers on new programs and protocols. Outfitting the Traffic Tribunal with the latest technology just made sense, said Craig Berke, spokesman for the judiciary.

“Out of our six state courts, the Traffic Tribunal is far and away the busiest,” he said. “It’s where most of our citizens get their first introduction to the court system ... .”

The Traffic Tribunal hears most traffic-related civil cases, from speeding and running a stop sign to driving without a license for 15 communities and the state police. Twenty-four communities have municipal courts that handle traffic violations.

The Traffic Tribunal oversees offenses handled in these municipal courts, said Berke. It also provides a motorists’ driving record to the municipal court and all Municipal Court dispositions are reported back to the tribunal. The tribunal transmits records daily to the Division of Motor Vehicles so that driver abstracts are kept up to date. The tribunal also prints and distributes the traffic -ticket forms used by communities.

The tribunal, which disposed of 101,044 cases in 2008, resulting in $11.9 million in fines, has about half of the judiciary’s entire caseload and collects the most fines of any court, Berke said. Each case can include more than one infraction. For example, a single ticket can carry a speeding violation, failure to use a signal, and failure to take a chemical test for blood-alcohol content.

The most frequent violations are refusing to submit to a breath-alcohol test, or failure to produce proof of car insurance.

The technology and new digs have also helped the state traffic court shed the stigma of being inefficient, uncomfortable and shabby.

The old location on Harris Avenue in Providence was a retrofitted factory. The parking lot had to be shared with Club Fantasies, often forcing court customers to park on the street. Often, they’d come back to find a parking ticket on the windshield. Worn carpeting and electrical wires fixed to the floor with duct tape were the norm in many courtrooms.

The problems continued in the inner workings of the courthouse. A scandal rocked the court when it was learned that politicians, police officers, judges, mobsters and others often got court officials to fix tickets. In response, the General Assembly approved a bill in 1992 that took the traffic court out of the Department of Transportation and placed it under the auspices of the judiciary . In 1997, the state Bureau of Audits reviewed the court — then called the Administrative Adjudication Court — and found a system rife with inefficiencies. The report said that tracking a citation through the system was “a shot in the dark,” and that 167,000 tickets –– worth $23.3 million –– were uncollected. Many were delinquent cases that the court had no way of tracking; others were uncollectible because the offenders had used fake names.

Investigations by The Journal in l998 showed that judges were receiving high salaries for working extraordinarily short days.

When Frank J. Williams, as Supreme Court chief justice, took over the judiciary in 2001, Berke said, he made it his goal to bring all of the courts — including the maligned traffic court — into the new century and improve the public’s access to justice.

In 2007, the court began to scan old tickets –– the ones already adjudicated and stuffed in hundreds of file boxes –– into the Traffic Tribunal’s new computer system. Those tickets can now be accessed from any computer in the court –– including the Traffic Tribunal’s office in Wakefield, which is used for some hearings in South County. In the past, if someone came to court to pay an outstanding fine, the clerk would have to go to the storage area and search by hand for the original ticket.

“You can’t lose an employee for an hour to try to find a ticket because it’s misfiled or someone put it in the wrong year,” Kevin Spina, court administrator, said. “Once it’s scanned in, we never have to search for that piece of paper again. It can be viewed from any screen and it can be viewed simultaneously. If a judge wanted to see it at the same time as a clerk, we could do that. It’s tremendously innovative. Especially with the amount of paper we have here.”

That collections process is being helped along by a new ticketing system used by six communities, and the state police, that electronically transmits the ticket information from a police cruiser to the local police department and then to the court. The goal is to get the entire state using the system by May.

The tickets aren’t the only thing getting the electronic treatment. A direct link to the Division of Motor Vehicles means that outstanding fines and penalties can be added to a motorist’s driving record more quickly, ensuring that police have up-to-date information.

The court also accepts ticket payments through the Internet and by phone, said Spina. Using the company VitalChek Network, the court is able to collect the fines at no additional cost to the state, though the motorist has to pay a $7.50 fee to the company for using the service. In the first six months of 2009, the court collected $779,000 this way from more than 5,000 tickets.

Walk into the court today and the word you’ll hear most often to describe operations: organized.

“The old building was horrible,” said Gary Rich, of Cranston, who was there because of a speeding ticket. “This is a lot more organized, there’s less wait. Even the parking was easier. [The changes] were so needed. The old court was very outdated.”

Linda Nardozza’s speeding ticket was dismissed because of her good driving record. After she paid court costs, she said the new organization of the traffic court definitely put her more at ease.

“I don’t feel so freaked out coming here,” said Nardozza, of Smithfield. “It’s a nice new building and it’s much more organized. Everything went smoothly.”

Looking at the Traffic Tribunal’s bottom line, it may not seem evident that the new technology has saved money, Guglietta said. But it has. The tribunal has seven vacancies, due to a budget freeze, and the technology has allowed the court to maintain the same level of service despite having a smaller staff, he said.

“There are no backlogs in data entry or processing cases anymore,” he said. “It’s more efficient for the motorist and we can issue orders to collect the money faster. Our collection rate is a good reflection of what technology has done for us. It’s not necessarily savings, but we’re more efficient in collecting money that goes to [state] general revenue.”

Guglietta said the court collects 80 percent of all fines levied through traffic violations adjudicated there, a 3-percent decline from last year. He speculated that the recession may be playing a role in the drop-off.

“When I’m sitting in the courtroom, I’ve seen many more people request to get on payment plans for our administration hearing fee [$35],” he said. “We’re seeing that now; people are asking for more time to pay, even when the sums that we’re assessing haven’t been that extravagant.”

And for those motorists who decide not to pay at all, the court may garnish Rhode Island income-tax refunds to get the outstanding payment. Spina said that since 2007, the court has collected $1.05 million in unpaid fines through that program.

“We’re anticipating a day when the judge on the bench will have a computer screen and we won’t have to make copies of the actual ticket,” Guligetta said. “The ticket will come up in the courtroom and we will be paperless from the police officer’s automobile …to the courtroom, and the judge will be able to adjudicate that case without having any paper.”

That transition is still about $700,000 away and a lofty dream in the current economic climate, Guligetta said.

Tribunal caseload

2004: 109,808

2005: 118,876

2006: 117,319

2007: 108,216

2008: 101,044

Source: Judiciary of Rhode Island

tbuford@projo.com