Maryland's toll authority let $818.1 million in unpaid tolls and penalties from out-of-state drivers go uncollected as of January 2026, according to a new state legislative audit, even as the agency continued to pursue Maryland residents over far smaller balances. Vehicles registered in Virginia alone account for more than $234 million of that total, with drivers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida and North Carolina making up most of the rest.
The audit, reported by WBAL NewsRadio, found that the Maryland Transportation Authority did not take available actions to collect the debt from out-of-state vehicles. Pennsylvania-registered vehicles owed $97 million, New Jersey-registered vehicles owed $80 million, Florida-registered vehicles owed $63 million, and North Carolina-registered vehicles owed $58 million, per the station's report. MDTA did not seek approval to refer any of these debts to Maryland's Central Collection Unit, and it also never hired a third-party collection agency to chase the money down.
Why the Debt Sat Untouched for Years
Much of the money has been sitting for a long time. State auditors found that 82 percent of the outstanding payments had gone uncollected for more than a year, and $387 million — nearly half the total — had been outstanding for more than three years, according to the same account. Once a debt ages that long, it becomes progressively harder to ever recover.
A large share of the balance isn't even unpaid toll charges themselves. As Maryland Matters reported on the same audit, actual unpaid toll charges account for just over 25 percent of the $818.1 million balance, while the remaining nearly 75 percent is accumulated civil penalties. Under MDTA's own toll regulations, a video toll not paid within 30 days triggers a $25 civil penalty per transaction — a rate the agency's board cut in half from $50 back in July 2020, but one that still compounds quickly across thousands of unpaid crossings.
MDTA Defends Its Inaction on Collections
MDTA has pushed back on one of the audit's central recommendations. The agency disagreed with the suggestion that it refer out-of-state debts to Maryland's Central Collection Unit, arguing that doing so could cost more money than it would ultimately recover. That defense centers on the CCU's mandatory 17 percent collection surcharge on referred delinquent state debts, a fee the unit relies on to fund its own operations, as Maryland Matters notes.
Beyond the collection-unit dispute, the audit also flagged that MDTA never established reciprocity agreements with neighboring states to suspend the vehicle registrations of out-of-state drivers over unpaid tolls, per the audit. Such agreements depend on MDTA's counterparts in other states navigating their own transportation-system laws and regulations, which has slowed progress. Maryland is now pursuing its first reciprocal toll enforcement agreement, with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, according to WBAL NewsRadio's reporting.
A Double Standard for In-State Drivers
The disparity is notable because Maryland residents face much tougher enforcement for far smaller debts. As of May 2024, more than 412,000 Maryland residents owed $58 million in tolls and $200 million in penalties, and over 46,000 of those in-state drivers were facing vehicle registration holds under state enforcement law, according to an Auto Consumer Alliance report. Out-of-state drivers, without reciprocity agreements in place, have faced no comparable consequence for debts that dwarf what individual Maryland residents owe.
MDTA has attempted broader relief before. During a nine-month Customer Assistance Plan that ended in November 2022, the agency waived $137 million in civil penalties for roughly 756,000 drivers and businesses who paid off their outstanding video toll balances, according to MDTA. Collection referrals and registration holds resumed the following month, in December 2022, but the program's design did little to address the specific out-of-state enforcement gap the new audit describes.
Stakes for MDTA's Massive Capital Projects
The uncollected sum is strikingly close to MDTA's entire operating budget. The $818.1 million figure is nearly equal to the authority's fiscal year 2025 operating budget of $885 million, Maryland Matters reports, underscoring how much revenue has slipped through the cracks relative to the agency's yearly costs. MDTA operates as an enterprise fund financed primarily by toll revenue rather than state tax dollars, meaning missed collections translate directly into lost operating capacity.
That matters because MDTA is on the hook for enormous capital commitments in the years ahead. The agency is managing the Francis Scott Key Bridge replacement, whose estimated cost has risen from an initial $1.7 billion to as much as $5.2 billion, a project Hoodline previously covered. MDTA is also planning a Chesapeake Bay Bridge rebuild estimated between $16 billion and $17 billion, and the authority typically funds such projects through revenue bonds backed by toll collections.
State lawmakers have already taken notice. During the 2026 legislative session, Maryland lawmakers introduced bills including SB0956 and HB1283 aimed at reforming video toll collections, after local reporting found that more than 26,000 video toll accounts individually owed more than $10,000 in accrued debt and penalties. The audit also noted a cybersecurity issue within MDTA's systems, though the specific findings were redacted for security reasons.
MDTA says it agreed with most of the audit's recommendations and is working on implementing the others, even as it holds firm against referring out-of-state debts to the Central Collection Unit. Whether that stance changes as pressure builds from lawmakers, and whether the Pennsylvania reciprocity talks eventually expand to other states, remains to be seen.
