Maryland Transportation Authority failed to collect $818.1 million in tolls, penalties – WTOP News

The agency that oversees the state’s toll roads and bridges has failed to collect more than $818 million in tolls and fees it was owed, according to a new audit.

The audit released Tuesday finds the Maryland Transportation Authority failed to collect the tolls and fees and did not take steps to have other states help collect from out-of-state motorists. The amount owed to the agency is nearly equal to the agency’s fiscal 2025 operating expenses, which total more than $885 million, according to the Office of Legislative Audits.

The audit found that nearly $669 million in tolls and fees went uncollected for a year or more. More than half that — $386.3 million — had gone uncollected for more than three years.

“Our review disclosed that although MDTA sent the registered owner of the out-of-state vehicle a notice of the toll and assessed penalties when the tolls were unpaid, it did not take available action to collect the amounts due,” the auditors wrote.

“Specifically, as of February 2026, MDTA did not execute reciprocity agreements with other states as allowed by State law which could include provisions for these states to suspend the out-of-state motorists’ vehicle registration if the tolls are not paid,” they wrote.

The amount noted in the audit represents an increase from earlier this year when the Department of Legislative Services reported the agency had more than $730 million in uncollected tolls and penalties assessed on out-of-state drivers.

In an interview Tuesday, Bruce Gartner, executive director of the authority, said improving collection is “something we’ve been focused on for a while.”

In Maryland, video tolling makes up about 11% of tolls collected, Gartner said. “Every agency, I’ll just say, is kind of in a similar situation with the video tolls,” he said.

“I’ve been working with the team on this basically since day one because I knew it was a challenge, and it’s even frustrated me that it’s taken this long, but it’s something we have to do,” Gartner said.

The legislative analysis also included more than $907 million in unpaid tolls and fees on vehicles registered in Maryland. Transportation officials can send those accounts to collections. They can also suspend registrations and prevent drivers from renewing their Maryland vehicle registrations for unpaid tolls and penalties.

All told, the total amount of uncollected tolls and penalties from Maryland and out-of-state motorists is equal to about one-third of the publicly reported cost of replacing the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Gartner said that Maryland, unlike other states, has low tolls but high penalties. The penalties, he said, make up the bulk of the outstanding collections.

“We are meeting our projections on the tolls. Every toll agency has leakage and our leakage in terms of actual toll revenue is very similar across the board to other agencies,” he said. “We know that’s the leakage that we see, that the nonpayment of video tolls, it’s not acceptable. We need to work as an industry to fix it.”

But of the outstanding amount, Gartner said “we might get 50% of our video tolls back, and it’s a small portion of our overall revenue, but it is leakage, and we have to address it.”

The agency, in its lengthy response to the audit, noted challenges with collecting from outside the state.

“While reciprocity agreements are valuable tools to encourage payment compliance, the development and implementation of reciprocal toll enforcement agreements are challenging for the State of Maryland, as well as other tolling agencies nationally,” the agency wrote in its response.

Auditors also noted that the agency did not hire outside collection agencies to help collect the back tolls and fees, nor did it request approval from the state budget secretary to send the accounts to the state’s Central Collection Unit.

The audit comes two years after lawmakers raised concerns about unpaid out-of-state tolls and penalties.

In January 2025, the agency said it believed it was close to entering into its first reciprocal agreement. The pact was expected to include the ability to suspend out-of-state vehicle registrations for unpaid tolls.

In July, the agency said it was still working to finalize that agreement, according to auditors.

Transportation officials also said at the time that they were working to hire an outside collections company. As of February, there were no agreements with other states and an effort to hire a contractor had not yet started, according to the audit.

The agency, in response to the audit, said it is preparing to seek bids from as many as nine firms that could assist in collecting the outstanding tolls and penalties.

State transportation officials, in a written response to the audit, acknowledged the problems and said the agency is working on a “multiprong approach” to collecting the unpaid tolls and penalties.

“This includes but is not limited to entering into toll enforcement reciprocity agreements with other jurisdictions, leveraging national electronic toll interoperability networks, and contracting with third party collection agencies to pursue unpaid debt,” the agency wrote in response to the findings.

“However, it is important to note that these actions require significant time to implement,” it wrote. “Executing reciprocity agreements, for example, depends on MDTA’s counterparts in other states to navigate laws and regulations associated with their respective transportation systems, creating long and unpredictable timelines for implementation.”

Gartner emphasized those points in the interview.

He said he believes the agency could have an agreement with Pennsylvania by the end of the year. From there, interagency cooperation could begin by the third quarter of calendar 2027.

“Hopefully the New York agency would come along, shortly thereafter,” he said. “Pennsylvania has been working with all the New York agencies, and we’ve been basically involved in those discussions. And it’s a challenge in that situation in New York that there’s multiple tolling entities as opposed to just being one in Maryland.”

He also expressed optimism about an agreement with Virginia.

The audit showed that a little more than a quarter of the lost total was in tolls, but the bulk of the money owed was in uncollected penalties. Virginia drivers were the biggest scofflaws, owing a total of $234.7 million.

“We’re working towards that as well,” Gartner said. “We’re just taking some lessons learned from the Pennsylvania discussions. Fortunately with Virginia, with the new administration, they’ve been incentivized to kind of reach out and work with us.”

Additionally, the agency is testing new technology that will allow toll facilities to read and charge electronic tolling systems other than the E-ZPass system. The new system would allow Maryland to electronically toll vehicles using systems in Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas.

“That’s a lot of commercial trucking that has those transponders in those states,” he said. “So we’re going after those solutions as well. It’s not just about these agreements or these debt collection tools. The best way to get this is to just keep doing that interoperability with these other major electronic tolling states.”

The audit comes amid the possibility that the agency might raise tolls. Officials have told lawmakers for the last several years that they may need to raise tolls as soon as fiscal 2028, which starts next July.

Gartner said Tuesday that he doesn’t expect toll increases until fiscal 2029.

That was little comfort to Republican lawmakers.

“This is another astonishing failure of basic government responsibility and unfortunately, will further support the administration’s eagerness to raise tolls in the near future,” said Senate Minority Leader Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Upper Shore).

“Before Gov. Moore even considers raising tolls on Marylanders, he should do the hard work of managing his administration and collecting the money it’s already owed,” Hershey said. “He needs to stop treating new taxes, higher fees and increased tolls as a substitute for governing.”

Maryland moved to a cashless toll system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Motorists pay tolls either through the use of the E-ZPass system or video tolling system.

“It’s the video tolls that go unpaid,” Gartner said.

For Maryland registered vehicles, a notice of toll due is mailed. Failure to pay the toll on time results in a $25 penalty. Failure to pay can result in a suspension of the vehicle registration, which is flagged for nonrenewal once the vehicle accumulates $1,000 or more in unpaid tolls and penalties.

In-state accounts are also sent to the state’s Central Collections Unit, which adds a 17% administrative fee.

Gartner said the agency was focused on implementing a new system during the pandemic and then dealing with the collapse of the Key Bridge and going through a “break-in period” with a new tolling contractor.

“We had to get the fundamentals down — the fundamentals of the system and toll collection, all the information that we’re monitoring,” he said.

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