TICKET TOSSING - City losing millions as judges toss out parking citations

Tuesday, 18 August 2009 22:32

INTERNAL REPORT SHOWS 80 PERCENT OF TICKET REVENUE FROM LATE PENALTIES

By Stephen Janis

As Baltimore publicly goes after millions of dollars in penalties for past-due parking tickets, an internal report prepared for Mayor Sheila Dixon shows that scofflaws can easily avoid paying past due tickets simply by showing up in court.

Nearly 95 percent of all tickets challenged in court in 2008 were thrown out, according to review of “parking adjudication,” prepared by a member of the Dixon administration. The tossed tickets translated into a loss of 10,000 citations in 2008 that failed to pass legal muster. The number was even higher in 2007, when more than 96 percent of tickets challenged in front of a judge were dismissed, resulting in the voiding of 11,000 tickets.

In total judges tossed nearly 30,000 tickets in three years, costing the city almost $1 million in fines, but also untold millions in penalties.

The study, which recommends the city convert parking tickets from criminal penalites into civil citations, reveals a system that relies heavily on penalties for revenue, but has little hope of collecting. For the past three years 80 percent of all monies owed on unpaid citations are late payment penalties in excess of the original fine.

“More than 80 percent of the revenues the city generates from parking citations comes from the penalties rather than the fines,” the report states.

But the propensity for judges to throw out tickets and the possibility of ticket amnesty hinder collections, the report concludes.

“Armed with the knowledge that the District Court dismisses tickets at a very high rates and the prospect that the city will grant another amnesty, many parking violators probably conclude the odds are in their favor.”

Baltimore assesses a $16 penalty for every month a ticket goes unpaid. The fines can accumulate indefinitely until the scofflaw makes payment arrangements.

The report also highlights the problems with an overburdened court system full of sympathetic judges inclined to throw tickets out, noting that the state court system garners court fees even if the ticket is tossed, giving judges little incentive to uphold penalties.

The report, which is currently under review by the Dixon administration, outlines a plan that would move ticket adjudication to a newly created Bureau of Administrative Review, entitling motorists to contest tickets at an administrative hearing instead of court.

The report says administrative hearings would save the city money by lifting the requirement for ticket agents to appear at trials. Citing statistics that show the average parking agent writes 29 tickets per shift, the report concludes the city loses citations that are not issued if the agent attends court.

The report also notes the limitations of trying to collect criminal penalties from unpaid tickets, citing the inability to place an unpaid criminal penalty on a credit report, or to sue in civil court.

City officials have hired a law firm to collect more than $100 million in unpaid parking related fine -- the result of 80,000 open citations.

But the plan has been controversial, prompting the formation of a protest group called Baltimore Scofflaws which has been critical of the city’s penalty system.

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Statistics on Baltimore parking tickets*

2006 2007 2009

Number of citations issued 406,965 422,966 396,613

Citations open 70,206 72,749 59,516

Value of open citations $29,113.592 $21,209,630 $13,297,400

Value of original fines $2,986,732 $2,832, $2,349,346

Value of assessed penalties $26,119,666 $18,367,837 $10,940,263

Number of citations closed 336,740 350,171 337,070

Value of closed citations $20,319,895 $19,735,802 $17,791,789

Value of original fines $11,057,809 $11,623,317 $11,398,740

Value of assessed penalties $9,804,953 $10,320,792 $10,068,004

Number of contested 9,499 12,003 11,054

Dismissed or reduced 7809 11,618 10,558

Percentage Dismissed/red 82 percent 96 percent 95 percent

Value of fines dismissed/red $238,221 $329,318 $356,989

*source: Parking Citation Adjudication in Baltimore

Comments (7)

The main reason city revenues are down is because of excessive taxation. The city's response to dwindling revenue due to excessive taxation is more excessive taxation. Leaches only know leaching. The leach does not care if it kills the host. It is confident that it can find another. City Hall and Annapollis are dominated by leaches. When ever there is a difficulty their response will always be to leach harder. For this is all a leach can do.
In short, those of you who expect any type of sensible action to come from City Hall are expecting the leaches to stop leaching and start producing. Not a dream but a fantasy.

The money belongs to the people who earn it. City of Baltimore does not deserve ANY money from tickets.

I would be interested to know what percentage of the District Court dismissals are a result of the parking enforcement agent's failure to appear in court. Often, an agent's entire book of tickets, or at least a portion of a ticket book, is set for court on a single day. If that agent fails to appear, the judge has no choice but to dismiss all of the cases involving that agent.

Additionally, a high FTA rate may encourage repeat offenders to request a trial and appear in court in the hopes that the agent will not appear, especially if that tactic has worked in the past.

Kelvin,
You're mean.

Does the report say which judges are doing the tossing, and which are not? Some don't like the City and toss them for that reason. Others might objectively think that it is the right thing to do.

Dear Rosalia,

I considered (for a minute) drafting a response which addressed your attempt to spin a debate on parking tickets into one which discussed the city's property tax rate. Then I realized any energy I expended trying to rationalize your rant would prove fruitless: this assumption being based not in the least on your poor use of the colloquialism (I cite "nickled and dimed", and then stop there). I'll instead present this: I hate you because you're an idiot. And you're irrelevant. Please go away and stay there.

Other than that, great article!

There is another side to this coin. What about the parking tickets given in error? My car was tagged with such a ticket--the parking agent perhaps didn't see my residential parking sticker. i sent a letter to the parking folks with proof of my sticker purchase and asked them to take it out of the system since it was the city's error and suggested my proof was testimony for a trial. Not realizing I had to request the trial and that the person who responded to my letter didn't do that, i waited for my trial date that never came. Meanwhile, penalties accured and it got an MVA flag fee that prevented me from renewing my tags. In all, this mess --a ticket given in error--cost me more than $200 to rectify so that I could get my tags renewed. I think the city needs to find a new way to make money than by writing out parking tickets. As a Little Italy resident, I hate moving my car on nights when the restaurants are busy b/c I don't want to drive around the neighborhood for an hour or so looking for a parking space. Studies have demonstrated that cutting the real estate taxes more than half would spurr development and growth and attract more tax payers to live in the city. The draconian tax penalizes long time city dwellers who want to stay in the same neighborhood but move into a different house. So people are fleeing, leaving the rest of us to be nickled and dimed by parking tickets, environmental tickets an all manners of ways to collect money to fil the city's dwindling coffers.