A couple from Berlin, Connecticut found they had been charged for hundreds of dollars in tolls mistakenly billed to them instead of a state Rep. with the same license plate number.
WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “ How a Berlin couple got billed for a CT legislator’s E-ZPass tolls,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. Read Mark’s story here.
WSHU: Hello, Paz, this is a fascinating revelation that you've done here, into the confusion regarding the assignment of low digit number plates in Connecticut. These are supposed to be specialized plates, so how come different people would get the same number?
MP: Well, yes, this is something I think that will surprise people, that every state, Connecticut included, has several classifications of motor vehicle license plates, and many states, not all, but Connecticut included, they will use the same numbers for different classes of plates, which is of no great moment, typically. But you know, my story focuses on the troubles that a couple had because the E-ZPass photographic readers confuse their plate with that of a legislator who had this same number.
WSHU: Tell us a little bit about the background of Dick and Gail Benson of Berlin and how they got into this trouble.
MP: There's a great irony here. The Bensons are not entirely amused by it, but they do certainly see the joke, and that is that Dick Benson was an aide to Governor Weicker and Senator Weicker for many years, and in that function, one of the chores he was given at the end of the Weicker administration is to distribute these low digit plates, one, two and three digit plates that the political class seems to think is kind of a cool thing to have. And he was charged with distributing what was left. And he was told, you know, take one for yourself and your wife. And Dick Benson is a disabled Vietnam vet. And he took the number three disabled vet plate and gave his wife a plate that was 145. And 145 happens to be the district number of a young state rep named Corey Paris in Stamford.
WSHU: Now let's get back to why state legislators get the number plates low numbers -- because of their districts, right?
MP: Right. They are the district numbers, and the plates are distinctive to the naked eye from a regular passenger plate. The plates have two blue stripes and it says legislative plate. So in most circumstances, there is not, you know, real confusion, although, as I was doing the reporting on this, I did, I did suggest to legislative authorities that perhaps it would make sense for legislative plate, if you were from the house to have, oh, I don't know, maybe the letter H before the number.
WSHU: Now, Corey Paris, state legislator from Stanford, has the same number as Gail Benson, and he has been going into areas where his license plate number has been read by the E-ZPass cameras. So what happened after that?
MP: So one day in November at the end of 2023, Gail Benson got a notice of an unpaid parking ticket in West Hartford, which she found odd, because she had not been to West Hartford in some time. And when she inquired, and West Hartford officials looked at it, they found that the car was not a Volvo, which is what she drives. It was a Kia, which Corey Paris drives. And after consulting with the department motor vehicle, they straightened it out. Then, in fact, it was Corey Paris's car. And then they thought, well, we better check our E-ZPass statement to make sure there's no other confusion. And they found hundreds and hundreds of dollars in tolls that they had been paying. You know, their E-ZPass account is on auto pay. And I don't know about you, but I'm not terribly attentive to certain bills that come in on auto pay. And so it went on for at least a year and a half.
WSHU: Wow.
MP: Yeah.
WSHU: It must have racked up quite a bit.
MP: So what ensued is it was made clear that E-ZPass is not the easiest organization to deal with, and they eventually got some credits back on their bills. And then finally, when I started inquiring, they also got a final check for another 240 bucks and Corey Paris said he was unaware of it, because he had an old E-ZPass, which he said he was unaware had become inactive. So he also was not checking his statements, if indeed he was getting any. And so he had his own problem in trying to straighten out what he owed. And in fact, at some point, E-ZPass was trying to ding him for late payments on charges that he had never received.
WSHU: You mentioned the fact that it's not easy dealing with the bureaucracy of E-ZPass. Tell us a little bit about your experience trying to sort this out.
MP: Well, going through the E-ZPass customer service, there was no luck there. I had better luck with the MTA Bridge and Tunnel authority. They did look into it, although they would not provide anyone for an interview to just sort of answer basic questions about, is there a written policy for handling these mistakes? You know, mistakes are inevitable. There are, you know, billions of transactions. E-ZPass is available in 17 states. In New York alone, there are six different tolling authorities. And you know, so you know, this stuff happens, but it was, it was pretty maddening to try to get some straight answers. At one point when they informed me that they had reviewed their files and they were sending a refund, I was told, so therefore, “there's no story here, right?”
WSHU: Interesting. What about the Connecticut DMV? You spoke with them. What's their take on all of this?
MP: Well, you know, the Connecticut DMV, like every DMV, is much maligned, but I have to tell you, in this story, the only bureaucracy that the Bensons and Corey Paris praised was the DMV, they said that they did what they could to help straighten this out. You know, they are not a direct player in this, as everyone knows, Connecticut does not have tolls, but there are interstate compacts in which their files are available to E-ZPass, and that's how E-ZPass can attach a photograph of a plate to an address and send a bill by mail if you don't have the E-ZPass transponder.
WSHU: So Paz, what's the bottom line here? Is it going to be any easier dealing with E-ZPass going forward? Is there any indication there might be some type of policy change?
MP: No. I don't see any possibility of that. Based on years of them dealing with these kinds of things, I did find other cases, sporadic cases around the country, and there's a similarity, and that is people tended to get refunds after the media started looking into it. You know, I don't know why this is so difficult for them now, part of it is the fault of these states having duplicate numbers on different classifications of plates.
WSHU: There are 10 number threes in Connecticut.
MP: Yes, including a state representative, Minnie Gonzalez (D-Hartford). But I talked to her, and she actually said, it's funny, it seems to work for her. She does not have a transponder. But she said, you know, just last week, she was up on the Mass Pike, and she did get a bill by mail. So apparently it works sometimes. But the DMV people told me that in their experience, there seems to be a tendency of the electronic plate readers to default to an assumption that they are a passenger plate and not one of the other classifications, you know. And so when it comes to plate number three, you know that Dick Benson has, there's a fire truck that has a number three. There's at least one legislator, although the state senator from the third district does not have legislative plates, and some legislators just, you know, they can't be bothered because you have to have a regular registration. You get the legislative plate by paying an extra $14 and some people like to have it on their car. I don't know about you, but I like to be anonymous.
WSHU: That's why I wasn't surprised that Senator Anwar preferred not to have one. Thank you so much Mark. I really appreciate it.
MP: Thank you.
