Illinois Tollway Satan Unfair, insane Downers Grove, Illinois

I have a problem with the Tollway, well, numerous problems. I am currently a graduate student finishing up my last year, so I am *broke as a joke,* like many Americans. My mom, who wasn't rich by any means, did what she could and went above and beyond to help me out however she could, and one of those things was to link my car to her IPass to facilitate me getting to and from school - I used to live on campus, but she fell ill my freshman year, and I moved back home to be her primary caregiver and just commuted. Without taking a tollway my commute was >1 hour, with it, it was like, 30 minutes. My mom passed away in January. the last thing on my mind at the time was the Illinois Tollway. It should have been the first thing on my mind, as I just had to pay half of the little bit of money she left me to help me get through school paying fines. I didn't realize at the time that I was still driving on her Ipass, so for about 3 weeks kept using tolls, while making her arrangements/dealing with the grief and shock. I went in there with a death certificate, and they did forgive the fines on those tolls and made me just pay the tolls. That isn't my issue with them. What my beef is, that day when I went in and changed my IPass to my own name and linked it to my account, and paid the 3 weeks of missed tolls, they said "okay you're all squared away." So, I get a $2000 notice this week in the mail from them. After trying on 3 separate days to get ahold of somebody, they said that there is a 7 day delay in fines appearing in their system, so when I went in and was told "you're all squared away," it turns out I wasn't squared away. There were a couple days of using tolls which amounted to about a whole whopping $10 that they felt deserved a 200,000% increase in fines.

They also do not have payment plans. I am in class 8 hours a day and I have 8 hour clinical rotations, and any job I've applied for either hasn't given me a callback or can't use someone with my availability, and I live off student loans and the tiny bit of money my mom left me, half of which now belongs to the Illinois Tollway. How is this legal or fair? what message has Illinois sent me other than to get the F* out of here and move to a state that appreciates its citizens? We aren't just a bunch of cash cows. Why do people pay money to sit in gridlock on a road that is being ripped up just to be repaved every 3 years anyways to keep the same nepotism-earned construction companies' coffers filled? I lost a mother, my best friend, and my role model 3 months ago, thanks in part to this state's crappy underfunded hospitals, and now I've lost half of what I was left from her as well? It wouldn't even be so bad if the State of Illinois used my $2000 to pay for hospitals, but I'm sure it's going to pay for graft, corruption, and to make people "look the other way" here and there in the decaying, moldy ladder of state government hierarchy.Screw you Pat Quinn. I hope you never have to go through this experience.