Court Will Offer Scofflaws a Bargain Deal : Law: In an effort to clear up an embarrassing 700,000 warrants, offenders will be given nearly three months to make good on old infractions--at bargain prices.

The San Diego County municipal courts will offer traffic scofflaws a three-month amnesty program devised by a task force of court officials instead of the one approved last week by the County Board of Supervisors, court administrators said Tuesday.

Hoping to eliminate as much as half the backlog of 700,000 warrants that has become an embarrassment to court and county officials, the courts will offer certain traffic offenders the chance to pay off outstanding fines at a discount, said Sharon Cole, trial courts manager for the San Diego Municipal Court.

Offenders with tickets and bench warrants for failure to appear in court issued before April 1, 1991, can pay off fines at $100 for each traffic infraction and $500 for each misdemeanor, under details of the plan released Tuesday by D. Kent Pedersen, administrator of the San Diego Municipal Court.

No criminal action will be taken against offenders who pay up during the amnesty, which will run from Feb. 2 to April 30.

The amnesty covers delinquent fines for violations of vehicle, municipal, county and Metropolitan Transit Development Board codes.

It does not include parking tickets, reckless-driving offenses or citations for driving under the influence.

Supervisor Susan Golding last week proposed an amnesty that would have allowed offenders to pay off their outstanding fines at 70% of the amount owed. The board adopted the plan on a 3-0 vote.

Golding’s more comprehensive plan also called for actions such as impounding the vehicles of people who have five or more outstanding parking violations and publishing the names of scofflaws in newspapers.

Both schemes take advantage of new authority granted counties under a state law approved last year.

But Cole said the court system has been working on its own plan for the past couple of months and will adopt its plan, not Golding’s.