Nevada leaders looking to decriminalize traffic tickets are hoping the third time's the charm.

Fierce resistance from cops, courts and local governments scuttled two past efforts, in 2013 and 2015, to halt arrests over small-time offenses such as an expired driver’s license, vehicle registration or car insurance policy.

Reno and Washoe County counted among the opponents to the most recent decriminalization push, citing up to $33 million in combined annual traffic fine and fee payments local governments claimed would disappear under the legislation.

Financial reports show Washoe and Reno together netted more than $5.2 million in traffic charges in fiscal year 2017.

Not everyone can cough up the cash to take care of those tickets, which can mean jail time for violations as minor as a speeding or fix-it ticket.

Data provided to state legislators reveal Nevada police agencies have made more than 5,400 arrests for traffic-related offenses so far this year. More than 500 accused offenders have been booked in jail.

On Thursday, a six-member committee of state lawmakers met for the first time to come up with recommendations to change those figures, hopefully in a way municipal governments can live with.

At least so far, local cops don’t seem impressed.

“Very minor traffic stops often lead to us finding major criminal violators,” said Chuck Callaway, a lobbyist for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “Some perfect examples are the terrorist Timothy McVeigh, the serial killer Ted Bundy and the serial killer David Berkowitz.

“So that’s something to keep in mind.”

The cost of keeping Clark County’s traffic violators in jail has topped $1.3 million since the start of January, Callaway told lawmakers.

He fears the cost of letting them go could be even higher, rattling off nearly a dozen offenses — such as driving without a license — that he said could endanger public safety.

Testimony from sheriffs in Carson City and Humboldt County largely echoed Callaway’s concerns.

Lawmakers, for their part, seemed more worried about who was paying, and collecting, the traffic fines Nevadans pay to stay out of jail.

Assemblyman Steve Yeager, the decriminalization committee’s chair and a former Clark County public defender, said he first became interested in state traffic laws after he heard about someone who was disqualified from the child adoption process after a background check dug up past traffic violations.

He suspects low-income residents are also getting the short-end of existing state law.

“You do see a fair amount number of people ending up in jail because of warrants related to their inability to pay,” Yeager, D-Las Vegas, told the Reno Gazette Journal on Tuesday. “That rubs me the wrong way.”

Nevada’s Administrative Office of the Courts — a state agency that is, like many of Nevada’s courts, heavily reliant on fees tacked on to traffic tickets — said it didn’t know if poor Nevadans were paying more than their fair share of ticket fines.

State Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, asked if $100,000 would be enough money to figure that out.

“Honestly I don’t know if that’s feasible, but I’ll certainly get back to you,” answered office administrator John McCormick.

Judge Kevin Higgins, of Sparks Justice Court, said he does his best not to issue arrest warrants for defendants who can’t afford to pay a traffic citation, preferring to put them on a payment plan or assign them to community service.

He, like state Supreme Court Justice James Hardesty, wishes Nevada’s courts didn’t have to rely on those revenues to keep their doors open.

“I think it really opens the entire question of how we fund the courts,” Higgins told state lawmakers. “I believe the Supreme Court would agree that courts should be generally funded and not funded out of special assessments.”

The legislative decriminalization committee — formally known as the Interim Committee to Study the Advisability and Feasibility of Treating Certain Traffic and Related Violations as Civil Infractions — plans to meet again as soon as the end of January.

Whatever the committee decides to recommend, if anything, will need to be approved by the full Legislature in 2019.