From Peter Hopper, VP, Account Services, Palio

I’ve been teaching my 16-year-old son how to drive. Being aware of, and respecting, law enforcement is part of the syllabus.

We’ve noticed that there was a notably higher presence of local and state police on “speed-limit enforcement details.” And it wasn’t just at the end of the month, looking to fulfill quotas. Then I heard on the radio – maybe it was Click & Clack on Car Talk – that it was not our imagination. Indeed, across the country, it appears that there are more and more officers on the road. More patrols result in more tickets, which generates more revenue for local municipalities. Let’s do the math: 100 more tickets a day at an average of $200 per ticket equals $20,000. That can add up to real money. With strained budgets, this revenue flow helps offset deficit budgets.

Hmmm.

A colleague of mine, in a post-presentation discussion on the FDA’s new “Bad Ad” program, made the point that when the FDA levies penalties on pharmaceutical companies for non-compliance, which can easily be in the hundreds of millions of dollars depending upon the severity of the violation(s), that money goes into the US Department of Health and Human Services’ revenue stream when the action is taken by the Agency and not the Department of Justice. Just as an example, recently, biotech drugmaker Genzyme agreed to pay a $175 million penalty for long-standing manufacturing problems.

Now, the “Bad Ad” program has many attributes including great PR for the FDA to demonstrate its increased efforts to police the industry, and the casting of a wider net by enlisting the professional public to monitor and report. Perhaps we can add to the list balancing the budget.

For a government keen to regulate, but challenged with funding priorities, could it be the perfect way to pay the piper?