Frederick County Maryland Proposal Could Punish EV Drivers

Ordinance Would Leave Innocent EV Drivers Vulnerable to Fines

The Frederick County Council introduced a bill last night that, if passed, will leave electric vehicle drivers vulnerable to steep fines at EV charging stations.

According to the text of the bill, “A person may not stop, stand, or park a plug-in vehicle in a plug-in vehicle parking space if the vehicle is not connected to the charging equipment.”

This sounds reasonable in theory. Nobody should park at a charging station unless they intend to use it. But there’s a problem when you try to codify this into the sharply defined confines of the law.

What happens if you plug in and someone comes along while you’re away and unplugs your vehicle? Then you’re in violation of a Class C offense of Section 1-1-9 of the Frederick County Code, punishable by a fine of between $100 and $250.

The person who unplugged you? Where is the law to prohibit their behavior? Apparently there is no law against unplugging an electric vehicle without the permission of the owner.* This will be a boon for the haters. Why roll coal on the “greenies” when they can just unplug their cars at the charging station and laugh when they get a ticket?

No More Charger Sharing

The Frederick County bill would make it illegal to share one charging station between two parking spaces. Charger sharing allows more efficient use of charging infrastructure. But under the “must be connected” language in the Frederick County bill, one of the two vehicles would be in violation if in a designated charging space and not plugged in.

Penalizes the Victim of Vandalism

Unfortunately another EV driver or a miscreant could unplug your car. This would immediately make you go from legally parked to being in violation of the proposed Frederick ordinance, through no fault of your own.

Council Discussion

This bill was discussed at a Council Workshop on June 22, 2021. Some Council Members were concerned that electric vehicle drivers will just park in charging spots because they are convenient.

Council Member Phil Dacey said, “One potential criticism of this is that you got a Tesla, that is a very expensive vehicle, a lot of times these chargers are, because of the way the infrastructure works, it’s cheaper to put them closer to the building… I think it’s subject to criticism that people with Teslas can park close.”

Council Member Kai Hagen, who is the sponsor of the bill, explained that in his observation the charging stations are not among the closest parking spaces to the door, but farther out into the parking lots. Hagen also expressed the belief that as more people have an electric vehicle and understand the need to be able to charge, they are not so likely to just pull into a charging spot and not use it.

Council Member Steve McKay then spoke to concur with Dacey’s concerns and emphasized that, “We sure cannot rely on the altruism of electric vehicle drivers to not want to just use that space because it is convenient.” McKay went on to say that he realizes that it adds another very hard to enforce element into a hard to enforce bill but he thought that it should have a restriction that you have to be actively charging or at least you were charging and it stopped.

Slime Balls

Council Member Hagen responded that it would be hard to know if someone had been charging or not and for that matter someone could game the system. “Frankly, if you know that is the case, you can just plug it in. Even if you don’t need a charge. So if somebody wants to be a slime ball, they can be in that regard. There’s not going to be any way to know they weren’t charging their vehicle.” Hagen admitted that some of this might be difficult to enforce and compared it to littering and speeding laws that are hard to enforce but try to shape public behavior.

State Anti-ICEing Legislation Failures

The sponsor expressed hope that this bill would encourage the state to pass a bill. There have already been 13 separate bills on this issue in the Maryland General Assembly. The legislature has been pursuing “anti-ICEing” laws for nearly a decade. In 2012, then State Senator Jamie Raskin sponsored SB340. Many bills were introduced and refined throughout the decade. This year Del. Kumar Barve sponsored HB480 and Frederick County’s own Sen. Ron Young sponsored SB315. They did not pass.

Similar bills in other states have been failing in recent years. North Carolina has a bill currently languishing in committee. Perhaps more lawmakers have figured out that jurisdictions can apply existing “failure to obey a sign” laws to protect public parking spots and private property owners can use existing trespass-tow laws.

It seems the issue of blocked charging stations is not as prevalent as it was six or seven years ago when a flurry of anti-ICEing laws passed. Site hosts have learned to place the chargers farther away from the desirable parking spots near the building. People are now more familiar with EV charging and good signage sends a message that they shouldn’t park at chargers.

Discourages Public EV Charging

The proposed Frederick County ordinance will discourage public EV charger usage. EV drivers have enough anxieties as it is. Chargers are often broken, charger pricing is hard to understand, there are too many apps and cards to keep track of. There’s idling fees to watch out for. And now we have to worry that we’ll get a ticket if someone unplugs our vehicle while it’s unattended.

What About the Broken Chargers?

It seems that it would be better for lawmakers to focus on charger reliability and imposing penalties on charging service providers who do not maintain their publicly funded charging equipment.

Frederick County is focused on penalizing individual “slime balls,” some of whom may actually be innocent victims. Instead the County Council should address a bigger concern of EV drivers. That is the problem of broken charging stations. It’s time to hold the corporations accountable.

*EDIT: There may be a Maryland law that would apply if someone unplugged a car w/o permission.
§ 14-104. Damaging or tampering with vehicle