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Committee passes towing overhaul clarifying access to personal items, standardizing fees and giving UDOT enforcement tools
Summary
The committee adopted a substitute for HB 261 that clarifies when owners can retrieve life-essential items from impounded vehicles, standardizes credit-card processing fees, allows UDOT to remove tow companies from rotations for violations, and exempts vehicles held as evidence until law enforcement releases them.
Representative Malloy presented substitute 2 of House Bill 261 and an amendment that narrows access-to-property provisions for impounded vehicles when the vehicle is held as evidence.
The bill makes several changes to the state’s towing laws: it requires towers to provide access to life-essential personal items (for example, medication and identification) from impounded vehicles; guarantees that once a towing fee is paid an owner can retrieve personal property; standardizes a reasonable 3% credit-card-processing fee for tows paid by card; and clarifies signage requirements by allowing signage that ‘‘substantially meets’’ specified legal standards rather than requiring exact dimensions.
Malloy and stakeholders also said the bill allows UDOT to remove a tow company from a towing-dispatch rotation if the company violates towing laws and regulations and prohibits local governments from imposing a maximum rate that deviates from state-established towing rates (the sponsor said the state has authority to set rates and local deviations would be unfair to towers who operate across municipal boundaries). The sponsor introduced an amendment to exempt vehicles and contents that are being held as evidence from immediate release until law enforcement notifies that the vehicle is no longer evidence.
UDOT, association representatives and industry speakers told the committee they worked with the sponsor and that the substitute is a negotiated compromise. Representatives from the Utah Professional Towing Alliance and the Utah Professional Towing Alliance president testified in support, urging enforcement teeth so that excessive charges are prevented. UDOT’s witness said the substitute gives the agency the regulatory tools needed to administer towing rules more effectively.
The committee adopted substitute 2, then adopted the sponsor’s amendment exempting vehicles held as evidence, and passed the bill out favorably by voice vote; the chair ruled the motions passed unanimously.
