This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.
The Connecticut Senate on Friday overwhelmingly passed the most significant reform to the state’s towing policies in decades, a measure lawmakers said would help protect drivers from predatory towing.
House Bill 7162 overhauls the state’s century-old towing statutes and comes in response to an investigation by the Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica that showed how state towing laws have come to favor tow companies at the expense of drivers. It takes several steps to make it harder to tow vehicles from private property and easier for drivers to retrieve their vehicles after a tow.
The bill, which passed the House of Representatives last week with wide bipartisan support and little debate, sailed through the Senate on a 33-3 vote.
“It’s reform that ensures transparency, it ensures fairness and accountability, but does all of this without undercutting the essential work that ethical and professional tow operators do each and every day for us, keeping our roads safe and our properties accessible,” said Transportation Committee Co-chair Sen. Christine Cohen, D-Guilford. “We’ve learned over the years, and particularly over the last year due to some investigative reporting, of some particularly egregious circumstances.”
A spokesperson for Gov. Ned Lamont said the governor plans to sign the bill into law.
Republican Sen. Tony Hwang, ranking member of the Transportation Committee, also spoke in favor of the bill. The bill got about a half hour of debate ahead of passage, and there were no comments in opposition.
Hwang, who represents Fairfield, said the bill strikes the right balance between the interests of towers and consumers.
“I want to acknowledge that our press had an important part to bring out transparency and some of the bad actions, and I think in this bill we address some of those issues,” Hwang said. “We took measures to ensure that there is due process, and what has been discovered to have occurred in a criminal action, I believe, should never, ever happen again, to undermine the trust that we have to have in this process.”
Connecticut’s law allows tow companies to begin the process to sell vehicles after just 15 days. CT Mirror and ProPublica found that it is one of the shortest windows in the nation, and that the law has particularly impacted people with low incomes. Reporters spoke with people who said towing companies required them to pay in cash or wouldn’t allow them to get personal belongings out of their vehicles. Many couldn’t afford to get their towed vehicles back and lost transportation or jobs because of it.
After weeks of negotiations, lawmakers said they came to a compromise with the towing industry. Two bills were merged to include massive reforms to towing procedures from private property and rate increases for highway tows that typically follow car accidents.
The bill that passed and would take effect Oct. 1 requires tow companies to accept credit cards and doesn’t allow them to tow vehicles immediately just because of an expired parking permit or registration. Vehicles can’t be towed from private property without notice unless they’re blocking traffic, fire hydrants or parked in an accessible spot.
Under the bill, towing companies can still start the sales process for vehicles worth $1,500 or less after 15 days, but they would now have to take more steps to give the owner a chance to claim the vehicle. The Department of Motor Vehicles would be required to check whether the driver filed any complaints about the tow before approving the sale, and the tower would have to send a notice ahead of the sale to the registered owner and lienholders via certified mail, with receipts of delivery.
The actual sale couldn’t go through until 30 days after the tow.
The bill also requires that towers take at least two photos before they tow a vehicle — one of the violation that resulted in a tow and another of any damage to the vehicle. Cohen said this would help determine if vehicles had any missing parts before the tow, a seeming nod to the news organizations’ story about a DMV employee who the agency’s investigators found schemed with a towing company to undervalue vehicles and sell them for thousands in profit. (The employee denied he did anything wrong, and the agency ultimately took no action in that case.)
The bill also establishes a working group to study how to handle proceeds from the sales of towed vehicles. State law requires that towing companies hold profits in escrow for a year in case the vehicle owner claims them, then remit that money to the state. But CT Mirror and ProPublica found the DMV never set up a system for that process to occur.
Additionally, it calls for the DMV to work with the state’s attorney general to develop a consumer bill of rights on towing.
Tow companies have to be available after hours and on weekends to allow people to get their vehicles or personal property. In a story published this month, CT Mirror and ProPublica reported that tow truck companies sometimes hold onto people’s belongings to pressure them into paying their towing fees.
Under the new law, drivers will be allowed to retrieve their belongings from their vehicles, even if they haven’t paid the towing fees. State regulations currently allow vehicle owners to retrieve only “personal property which is essential to the health or welfare of any person.”
Cohen listed many of the issues outlined in the news outlets’ reporting as “some of the worst abuses of predatory towing practices.”
Timothy Vibert, president of Towing and Recovery Professionals of Connecticut, said the industry initially opposed the bill because towers believed it would impede their ability to tow cars and clear traffic. He also said towers weren’t involved enough in the original draft. But they worked with lawmakers on the bill over several weeks, and he issued a statement in support this week.
“The people of Connecticut deserve safety, accountability and transparency when their cars are towed, and so do the people who work for Connecticut’s towing companies who risk our lives every day to make our roads safe,” Vibert said. “We all need clear, easy-to-follow rules.”
DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera commended the House and Senate.
“The DMV fully supports this initiative, as it not only enhances the framework for fair and equitable enforcement of towing laws but also provides a clear path forward for our agency to advance these efforts,” Guerrera said in a statement.
Cohen said that the bill aims to “fix a broken process,” and that lawmakers had worked on some aspects of it for years before the bill passed.
News of the bill’s passage brought relief to Melissa Anderson, who was featured in a CT Mirror and ProPublica story after her car was towed and sold from her Hamden apartment because of an expired parking permit.
The bill requires a 72-hour grace period before a car can be towed for an expired parking sticker to allow people time to get a new one.
“I’m glad we made a difference,” Anderson said. “This is going to help a lot of people.”
The bill next heads to Lamont’s desk.
“The Governor appreciates all the work that went into this legislation, which provides greater protections for the public and their vehicles,” Lamont’s spokesperson, Rob Blanchard, said in a text message. “He plans on signing the legislation once it reaches his desk.”
