Baby Don'tcha Go, Don'tcha Go to New Haven

Matt Welch | November 29, 2005

Few petty annoyances chap my hide more than greed-crazed parking cops, and the cities addicted to their ill-gotten booty. Now I see these monsters have an insidious new tool:

A few weeks ago, New Haven resident Cara Norman found her son's car being towed from outside her Connecticut home. The reason stunned her. It turns out she owed $37 in back taxes. [...]

[I]n a small but growing number of cities, vehicle tax and parking ticket deadbeats are being nailed by the taxman's new high-tech tool.

"We like it," says Moses Cortez of the Arlington Treasurer's Office in Virginia. "It makes our job a lot easier."

It looks like a radar gun, but it's actually an infrared scanner that reads license plate numbers and then runs them against a computer database of tax and ticket delinquents. If there's a match, it locks in. [...]

On a recent outing through the streets of Arlington, it only took seven minutes to hit pay dirt. The car was stripped of its plates, booted or towed until the owner pays up.

Arlington County Treasurer Frank O'Leary says it's a cash cow.

"It sure is and we're going to keep doing it," he says. "The cars just jump right out and say, 'Here I am, come and get me.'"

Arlington is reeling in $2,800 of lost revenue a day, already more than paying for the gadget, which cost $2,700.

More here and here; thanks to reader John Gould for the tip.

Comments

Mike|11.29.05 @ 1:39PM|#

Parking enforcement "officers" are some of the worst offenders, especially in my former hometown Pittsburgh. They would ignore the permit on my vehicle and ticket me anyway, hoping that I would either pay the fine or get to the 5 ticket limit where they could boot my car and charge me $300 + for the boot to be taken off. The city had a nice system with their street cleaning service that came by twice a week, once on each side of the road. If you were there before the cleaner came, there was a $15 fine. Unfortunately the city has so few parking spots (even on the street) it is impossible not to park in one of these zones. What a crock.

|11.29.05 @ 1:42PM|#

is that a CVB reference?

|11.29.05 @ 1:48PM|#

I was recently visiting a friend in Northern Virginia and received a citation/warning ($0) for not displaying a local registration decal. The assumption was that I was a local resident who had not registered my car with the local government (even though I had a decal for my address of record in Central Virginia). I then received a letter at my Central Virginia address stating that "the above referenced property may be garaged in Loudon County, but does not display a current decal for the locality in which it is parked... failure to comply with the above requirements may result in the issuance of a citation, summons to appear in court, license suspension, and other fines or actions."

Interestingly enough, the local decal initiative is called "Project Fairness."

|11.29.05 @ 1:49PM|#

I work in downtown Washington DC near the museums. For two straight days I've noticed an abandoned car just sitting on the street (it's a real junker with missing tags). Laughably, there are tickets in the windshield. Gee, I wonder why they're taking their sweet-ass time towing the damned thing.. maybe because they won't collect on it?

On the private front, my apartment management allowed an abandoned junker sit in the lot for weeks on end. However, because my visiting girlfriend was a day late on renewing her tags on her new VW, they fucking let a tow-truck on the property to steal her car (this was done in the dead of night).

|11.29.05 @ 1:51PM|#

Could that "reporter" have done a more thorough job of polishing those people's knobs?

|11.29.05 @ 1:56PM|#

This happened to my parents last year when they decided to park their car next to a friend's house in Queens for a few days before taking a flight out of JFK. Apparently my dad had an outstanding parking ticket on the car issued five years before in Manhattan. The worst part about the ordeal was that it took two days for their friend to be informed about exactly what had happened, during which time he and my parents had to assume that the car had been stolen.

|11.29.05 @ 1:59PM|#

While we're bitching- I hate this new thing they are going to do, where parking meters sense when a car leaves and resets itself. In my mind, that space has been bought and paid for for a certain amount of time. Now they want it to be like a non-transferable personal license. It makes my stomach turn to see the officials talk with so much glee about how much more money this will rake in. And they make it sound like the riff raff have been getting away with some sort of crime all this time.

|11.29.05 @ 2:01PM|#

When I was in law school, living in downtown Chicago, I parked my car on the street (for free where I lived, believe it or not). The city, in the middle of the day and without prior notice, rezoned the street temporarily for a movie shoot (Blink) and ticketed and towed my car along with twenty or so others. I thought about fighting it, but one of my professors took me aside and patiently taught me the difference between law and how Chicago does business :)

|11.29.05 @ 2:12PM|#

i don't think i've ever seen so much agreement on this site before.

and slightly shifting scope, maybe the libertarian party should make the abolishion of crappy parking policies one of it's main issues. it's one issue that could overlap with enough people to get the party some (positive) attention.

B.D.|11.29.05 @ 2:12PM|#

The real question, deftly missed by the article, is what is happening with the information being input into that database. Bruce Schneier has reported on one such database being used in the Boston area. Yes, license plates are scanned, but then the location of those plates is stored in the home database. The company that owns the database - which is NOT Boston - says that they plan to sell the data on the individuals and their car locations to marketing companies. There's the outrage on top of the outrage.

|11.29.05 @ 2:26PM|#

Just to polish off my reputation as an utter bastard, I'd like to mention that during my urban years, whilst living in Seattle, I'd routinely report people who parked in front of the fire hydrant outside our apartment.

Can I still be a libertarian?

|11.29.05 @ 2:26PM|#

Yet another reason to move to the suburbs...

|11.29.05 @ 2:27PM|#

dead elvis:

Yeah, the greed involved in parking meters is unbelievable. A couple years ago, in my town, there were plenty of free parking spots on the streets near a subway station (which charges $4 a day to park in its lot). It's a nice way to encourage use of public transit, right?

The city fathers decided to cash in this little perk, and within a week all these fucking parking meters sprung up like dandelions, set to the price of the metro parking lot. Two years later, a vast majority of those spaces are never used (I see them every day), each one guarded by a lonely meter, which probably cost many hundreds of dollars apiece.

Fucking morons.

M1EK|11.29.05 @ 2:27PM|#

"i don't think i've ever seen so much agreement on this site before."

Which shows you that most peoples' libertarianism is skin-fucking-deep when it comes to their car, at which point they turn into suburban Republicans. Whine about transit-riders getting subsidies, but if you choose not to pay the bill for your parking space, it's the evil government!

Cry me a river. Park legally or ride the damn bus.

|11.29.05 @ 2:28PM|#

Mr. NG: I work in downtown Washington DC near the museums. For two straight days I've noticed an abandoned car just sitting on the street (it's a real junker with missing tags). Laughably, there are tickets in the windshield. Gee, I wonder why they're taking their sweet-ass time towing the damned thing.. maybe because they won't collect on it?

How the hell do they ticket a car that doesn't have registration tags?

|11.29.05 @ 2:43PM|#

Dave S:

That's a good point. The tags are definitely gone, and there are brightly-colored slips on the windshield. I'm assuming the piece of crap will be still there when I head home, so maybe I'll check it out. I just hope I don't get gang-tackled by the parking cops hiding in the bushes.

I'll venture a guess that maybe those slips are warnings that they are eventually going to tow the car. That's fine, but if it were a vehicle that they had a chance to collect on, that fucker would've been gone in 60 seconds and rotting in a impound lot in SE DC.

|11.29.05 @ 2:44PM|#

maybe the libertarian party should make the abolishion of crappy parking policies one of it's main issues.

One problem here is that the LP position on roads --

We call for the privatization of airports, air traffic control systems, public roads and the national highway system.

-- is one of the more radical of the platform and one of the more difficult for people raised in a statist world to appreciate.

Any position on parking needs to take that into account. And then be ready for the screams of indignation when the road owned by WalMart has cheaper parking meters than the one owned by the Mom'N'Pop stores!

|11.29.05 @ 2:45PM|#

Eh, I just budget $350 a year for parking tickets and try to pay them promptly. Often it's not the city per se but neighborhood residents and business owners who get all het up about parking issues and take to activism. And suburban neighborhoods are, in my experience, the biggest parking nazis around.

|11.29.05 @ 2:56PM|#

but if you choose not to pay the bill for your parking space, it's the evil government! Cry me a river. Park legally or ride the damn bus.

I believe that's not the complaint; but rather that parking revenue is an end unto itself, instead of being a tool that keeps demand for street parking in line with supply, and enforces certain common sense no-parking areas. Like with drug-crime confiscations, or speeding tickets, or red-light cameras, or whatnot, public service ends up taking a back seat to maximizing revenue.

M1EK|11.29.05 @ 2:59PM|#

Oh, and the suburbs are _worse_, if you're a real libertarian. Force every business to pay for a ton of parking which can only be used for that business (which means all parking is free and at any given time 80% of it is sitting unused, covering up land that could be used for a more valuable economic purpose, i.e. ANYTHING ELSE).

Anybody who whines about the cost of parking is further away from libertarianism than the worst supposed statists on this board. Parking, in a real market, would almost NEVER be free.

M1EK|11.29.05 @ 3:04PM|#

"I believe that's not the complaint; but rather that parking revenue is an end unto itself, instead of being a tool that keeps demand for street parking in line with supply,"

The first implies the second. And frankly, y'all never apply the same vehement dislike to transit fares, which, by the way, provides MORE of the cost of a typical transit trip than the average motorist directly pays for their drive and park.

|11.29.05 @ 3:11PM|#

"Force every business to pay for a ton of parking"

What the heck world are you living in? The suburban businesses willing provide parking so that their customers can visit more easily. I should know, I develop strip malls, dumb-ass. If anything, the regulations limit the amount of free parking I can offer.

Where I live, you can pretty much park where-ever you want, for free. Ah, the beauty of the suburb.

|11.29.05 @ 3:11PM|#

Parking, in a real market, would almost NEVER be free.

Nothing is ever free, in any market. But to use the case above, no private parking company would have the authority to randomly search every car and then confiscate it.

|11.29.05 @ 3:15PM|#

"transit fares, which, by the way, provides MORE of the cost of a typical transit trip than the average motorist directly pays for their drive and park."

Often repeated, but never true...

|11.29.05 @ 3:19PM|#

The first implies the second.

Not necessarily. Certainly in the above example of the street parking getting priced the same as the transit lot parking, the state is failing both in utilizing the supply of spaces efficiently or in maximizing revenue. They also appear to be dinging the subway revenues. Frankly, one wouldn't expect the state to be good at this at all. Parking, like everything else, should be privately run.

Another complaint about the state handling parking is that they use and abuse coercive powers that private parking operators couldn't. The anchor article -- where the state is running a forfeiture racket on unrelated offenses -- is a fine example.

taktix|11.29.05 @ 3:20PM|#

Mike

I know what you mean. I live in Pittsburgh now and went downtown to return a camcorder wire to Ritz Camera.

I found a spot that had aparking sign with about 20 caviots regarding restrictions, etc.

So I get out and drop a quarter in the meter, and discover 25 cents gets me THREE WHOLE MINUTES!!!

|11.29.05 @ 3:28PM|#

"and slightly shifting scope, maybe the libertarian party should make the abolishion of crappy parking policies one of it's main issues. it's one issue that could overlap with enough people to get the party some (positive) attention."

Actually what the libertarian party should be for is returning _all_ fines that are collected, including traffic and parking tickets, meter frees, etc to the people of the state city or country where they are issued.

|11.29.05 @ 3:30PM|#

Last year during the holidays the Philadelphia Parking Authority gave everyone a "break". They spent a day putting little cards on every windshield that read:

Happy Holidays from the PPA! During the holiday season, parking will be free from 11am to 3pm.

Now, first of all these cards must have been fairly expensive. 3 colors, good thick, textured stock. Secondly, they paid a bunch of people to go around to not give tickets out. Thirdly, the amount of revenue they receive between those hours is paltry compared to their cash cow hours of 8-10am and 5-8pm.

I still got plenty of tickets during the holidays, as did everyone else. In Center City it's really a joke. Everyone gets lots of tickets. Between the 2 hour limit, wonky zoned parking permits and requiring a handicapped space on almost every corner it's a major problem there. Now I live in West Philly where the parking is actually more or less free and in South Philly you just park in the middle of the street.

But in Center City the PPA rules supreme. Absolutely no questions asked, you are much, much better off to pay $100+ dollars a month to park in a garage. Parking permits are the best solution, but they have certain, reasonable restrictions that I was not able to comply with and will not help you if you want to go somewhere else in the city.

MP|11.29.05 @ 3:33PM|#

M1EK,

You are going off on a lot of wild tangents that don't appear to be supportable by the general comments on this thread. User fees for parking are clearly a generally supported Libertarian position. Using fines/fees as a general revenue generator are not.

And BTW, "free" parking would generally be built by businesses who have an incentive to attract customers.

|11.29.05 @ 4:28PM|#

I believe that's not the complaint; but rather that parking revenue is an end unto itself, instead of being a tool that keeps demand for street parking in line with supply, and enforces certain common sense no-parking areas.

That, and there's something a little disturbing about the police taking away your car in a situation where you have no clue as to why it was taken, and thus no clue as to who most likely took it. All the moreso if it happens in an area where you don't live, thus making the answer to the prior questions quite important in terms of personal logistics.

|11.29.05 @ 4:36PM|#

This one of the many reasons why I choose not to own a car.

|11.29.05 @ 4:41PM|#

Why aren't local governments seeking tax collection and fine collection the old fashioned way of garnishment? Is it because of the political support of traffic wardens or tow-truck companies? Or is it because the idea of garnishment as a method of tax collection sparks a backlash against taxes?

Seriously, I would like to know why local governments seek to tow and dock rather than garnish.

|11.29.05 @ 5:08PM|#

It's a good thing I didn't park on the street when I went to New Haven last week. I had outstanding taxes on my car which I didn't know about until my registration renewal was declined.

Over the summer, I found out that my car had been assigned to the wrong tax town. The tax office was supposed to fix it and send me a new bill. When I got the bill a few weeks, my car had apparently appreciated in value.

I went downtown to inquire how the assessed value on my car could have risen from last year. It was implied that my car was still being undervalued by the city, and if I liked, the taxable value could go up. Since I needed to get the registration renewed today, I had to let it go, but damn, I felt like my head was going to explode.

If I'd learned all this as a result of my car being impounded(with the addition towing and "storage" fees, I might have gone on a rampage.

Timothy|11.29.05 @ 5:09PM|#

Let's see, the resale value of my car is about $5,000 at present, and wasn't much higher a couple of years ago living in Oregon. I owed the city $90 in parking tickets. They booted my car after the posted times of enforcement (2 hour limit ended at 3pm, I was booted & cited at 3:32pm), fined me an additional $40 for non-payment and $45 for the actual booting, and left a big orange sticker that said I had until 11am the next day to pay the fines or my car would be impounded (and auctioned if I still did not pay). The office opened at nine, it was 6:00 when I got back to the car and they were closed.

Which means, really, they were threatening to take my property for failure to comply with their extortion scheme. The roads that have been built by the government (and I'm largely okay with public surface streets, highways should definitely be private) and are maintained with tax dollars (property taxes, which I paid by way of rent & income tax, which I sometimes owed, & Eugene's local gas tax) get to arbitrarily set time limits on parking so the University doesn't lose money on parking permits when it only has 800 spots for a student population of 20,000? Bollocks.

If they're going to tax you to build roads, I see no compelling reason they should be allowed to then impose arbitrary rules in order to generate more revenue. Would this cause excess demand for parking? It could, but you know, there are non-monetary costs (wait time, etc) that would likely balance that out.

M1EK|11.29.05 @ 5:24PM|#

"If they're going to tax you to build roads, I see no compelling reason they should be allowed to then impose arbitrary rules in order to generate more revenue."

Great! So no more bus or train fares. Swell!

And as for excess demand for parking - well, without price (parking fees) to manage demand, we'll just have to rely on the only other method - rationing through long lines! That worked great in the Soviet Union.

M1EK|11.29.05 @ 5:26PM|#

"User fees for parking are clearly a generally supported Libertarian position. Using fines/fees as a general revenue generator are not."

Charging whatever the market will bear == good, except when it hits people with cars; then it == bad. Got it.

"And BTW, "free" parking would generally be built by businesses who have an incentive to attract customers."

And there would be a lot less of it, because before the zoning codes in this country started forcing it on businesses, relatively few bothered to build their OWN lots; relying on the market to provide shared parking for many businesses in the same area, which turns out to be far more efficient.

MP|11.29.05 @ 5:34PM|#

Charging whatever the market will bear == good, except when it hits people with cars; then it == bad. Got it.

How my post led you to that conclusion is beyond me. Let me rephrase. When a Government entity charges a user fee for the purpose of covering the costs required to maitain the service being used (whether it is parking, roads, trains, etc.), that's good. When the amount charged for a user fee is simply a function of the how much the fee could add to the General Fund (not the maintenance fund of the service) that is bad.

relatively few bothered to build their OWN lots
That's because government was subsidizing the parking. Once you eliminate free on-street parking, business will opt to supply parking (or more likely, lobby for goverment subsidized parking).

M1EK|11.29.05 @ 6:43PM|#

"When a Government entity charges a user fee for the purpose of covering the costs required to maitain the service being used"

That's not why parking isn't free. Try again.

"relatively few bothered to build their OWN lots
That's because government was subsidizing the parking"

No, once again, BEFORE zoning rules required businesses to build parking, the government didn't build any EITHER (other than on-street parking, which continues today). Somebody with a nearby piece of property, if there was sufficient demand, would turn it into a (pay) parking lot.

MP|11.29.05 @ 8:25PM|#

That's not why parking isn't free. Try again.

Using market pricing mechanisms to set the rate for government services sets the stage for any number of Public Choice related problems. Government parking fees are justified on the basis of traffic control are simply statist fine tuning of lifestyle habits. Feel free to offer up a reason why, in a free society, government should be setting rates for government run parking facilities beyond the maintenance fee.

Unsurprisingly to you, my root argument is that government shouldn't be in the parking business.

|11.29.05 @ 9:30PM|#

Between the 2 hour limit, wonky zoned parking permits and requiring a handicapped space on almost every corner it's a major problem there.

Er, if you bring your car into a city that was built before the invention of cars, you can't expect every shop to be surrounded by an acre of parking like you're used to.

M1EK|11.30.05 @ 9:05AM|#

"Feel free to offer up a reason why, in a free society, government should be setting rates for government run parking facilities beyond the maintenance fee."

Because it promotes a more efficient use of that otherwise non-economically-productive space.

"Unsurprisingly to you, my root argument is that government shouldn't be in the parking business"

I agree. But in the real world, since they ARE in the parking business until we completely destroy all roads which are wide enough for on-street parking, the parking business remains. I'd be happy if the parking rights along a given street were auctioned off to the highest bidder yearly who could then run it under few constraints; if the highest bidder chooses to then make the parking 'free', so be it.

|11.30.05 @ 10:22AM|#

My own experience with Virginia county-based vehicle taxes: I haven't lived in Virginia for 5 years. My licence and vehicle registration reflect this. Yet every year I am sent a bill by the Virginia locality from which I moved. Attempts to clear the situation up have been futile and the bills keep coming. With this article in mind I doubt I'll be returning to The Commonwealth, ever.

|11.30.05 @ 1:17PM|#

"Feel free to offer up a reason why, in a free society, government should be setting rates for government run parking facilities beyond the maintenance fee."

M1EK-

Because it promotes a more efficient use of that otherwise non-economically-productive space.

How exactly do you define efficient? At what point did the government start to do anything efficiently besides seperate us from more and more of our money? How do you figure a parking spot to be non-economically-productive? How economically productive would businesses be if no one had a place to park to shop there? How much sales tax would be generated, how many people would shops no one went to employ? If the tax payers already paid once for the damn things to be built we should not be charged endlessly for using it.


These are all just more creative ways to get our money, excuse me THEIR money. They will keep coming up with more and more of them as they keep spending more and more beyond their means. After all what could be a better profit driver than your police force shaking down all your citizens and making them fear loss of property or freedom over a fine. Once they have spent that extra fine income (which is likely already spent as soon as they project how much money it will generate) whats next? You know there will be a next right? After all its not their money and never will be because as the law they are above the law thus guess who can get all the tickets they want and never pay a fine. HMmmmmmmmmm the POLICE perhaps.

Oh and what the hell does parking fees have to do with demand in a situation where the state knowingly enrolls students in colleges with far to few parking spots. Then they proceed to ticket the hell out of everyone without a winning lottery ticket for a parking sticker! Usually they give you some BS line about how the fines are going to build more parking spots, yeah uh huh and the casino money is going to the children too!

*bending over trying to remove the smoke from my ass*

M1EK|11.30.05 @ 3:02PM|#

My last comment appears to have vanished. I'll try a shorter one.

"Oh and what the hell does parking fees have to do with demand in a situation where the state knowingly enrolls students in colleges with far to few parking spots."

Where to begin with this one. If you have a car at college, grow up. Allocating scarce resources by price rather than by rationing is how the free market economy produces better results than, say, Soviet Russia did. This does not require that the price match the cost of production; nor should it.