Hawaii is sitting on a mountain of unpaid parking tickets worth nearly $15.3 million, and the state does not have many good ways to claw that money back. Since 2020, lawmakers have taken one of the strongest tools out of the courts’ hands, leaving collections and default judgments as the go-to tactics for chasing down the debt.
According to Hawaii News Now, records obtained from the state Judiciary show that 215,208 parking tickets issued between 2020 and 2025 have gone unpaid, adding up to roughly $15.3 million still on the books. Investigators report that the backlog is being driven in no small part by chronic violators, not just the occasional missed meter.
How Act 59 Changed Enforcement
In 2020, Act 59 quietly rewrote how the state pressures people to pay traffic fines. Before the change, judges could issue a court-ordered “stopper” that told the director of finance to block a driver’s license or vehicle registration renewal until unpaid tickets were taken care of. Starting November 1, 2020, that stopper authority was repealed, and the relevant parts of chapter 291D in the Hawaii Revised Statutes were amended to remove that automatic renewal block as an enforcement tool, according to the Session Laws of Hawaii (Act 59).
Repeat Offenders and Out-of-State Snags
The Judiciary records turned up a familiar theme: a relatively small group of drivers racking up a big slice of the debt. The five license plates with the most unpaid tickets alone account for about 750 citations. One standout is a white Toyota pickup with Washington plate C46386R, which has been tagged at least 200 times and is listed as owing around $7,060.
The reporting also found that three Hawaii plates were referred to a credit company, while tickets tied to Washington and Georgia plates were not. A Judiciary spokesperson told reporters that cases involving out-of-state vehicles generally do not go to collections because the courts do not receive registered-owner information from the DMV. Sen. Karl Rhoads, who sponsored the 2020 law, said the goal was to avoid “disproportionately punishing people who, for whatever reason, couldn’t pay a $35 parking ticket,” while Rep. Darius Kila warned that the resulting revenue hole is a serious problem for the state budget, according to Hawaii News Now.
Courts' Limited Options
When drivers ignore tickets or fail to show up in court, traffic judges can enter default judgments and, under court rules, refer delinquent accounts to collection agencies. That step shifts enforcement out of the Judiciary’s hands and into the private sector, but it often does not produce much when owners live in other states or are hard to locate.
The Judiciary’s rules and guidance explain that overdue accounts may be assigned to collection companies and that anyone contacted about those debts must deal directly with the collectors. As a result, referral to collections has become the standard fallback now that license and registration stoppers are off the table. State Judiciary rules
What Could Change
Potential fixes already being floated range from information-sharing agreements with mainland DMVs, to more aggressive county-level enforcement, to expanded use of credit reporting and collection programs. Each approach brings its own headaches, including concerns about privacy, fairness and whether the cost of tougher enforcement would eat into whatever extra revenue gets recovered.
That leaves lawmakers with a familiar balancing act: deciding how to shield low-income drivers from harsh penalties for relatively small fines while still going after millions of dollars that typically help support local services.
For drivers, the immediate takeaway is simple. Without the old registration stopper, unpaid parking tickets are more likely to end up in collections or as court judgments, while the state chases roughly $15.3 million that could otherwise be backing public programs. Those new numbers have thrown a budget-sized spotlight on an enforcement gap that legislators say they thought they were carefully narrowing when they passed Act 59.
