L.A. Plans to Ease Parking Restrictions for the Press

Working members of Los Angeles’ news media could ignore parking meters and the restrictions of limited-time parking zones and park with impunity for up to 20 minutes in no-parking areas under a proposed city policy scheduled to be implemented within two weeks.

The parking policy would afford the news media the same courtesies already extended by the City of Los Angeles to other government agencies and public utilities.

“While the news media do not fall under the broad category of a government agency or public or private utility, and enjoy no legal exemption from parking regulations, the quasi-public service nature of their function lends itself to extending to them the same courtesies as to government agencies and utilities,” the new policy states.

The policy was drafted by Parking Administrator Robert R. Yates, whose Department of Transportation took over parking enforcement functions from the Los Angeles Police Department last December. Yates said his department has received increasing complaints from the news media about parking tickets.

Last year, there were about 1.6 million parking tickets issued in Los Angeles by 360 civilian parking enforcement officers. This year, with 80 additional officers and the Department of Transportation’s emphasis to produce more citations, the number of tickets is expected to surpass 3 million.

Yates said that the new press parking policy came about after meetings with members of the Los Angeles Radio and Television News Assn. of Southern California.

“Our microwave trucks are too big to park in the garages so we’ve been having to park them illegally on the street, and we’ve been getting tickets left and right,” said Jeff Wald, news director at television station KTLA and president of the Radio and Television News Assn.

Some members of the news media contend that accepting any privilege not given the average citizen could be interpreted as a bribe of sorts.

Los Angeles Police Commission President Robert M. Talcott, who along with his fellow commissioners receive no official parking privileges, criticized the press parking policy as “inappropriate--period. I am sure that the vast majority of the citizens of Los Angeles feel that their activities would warrant the same consideration as the news media’s. . . . Would this apply to a reporter who might be covering a beauty pageant and who is late in renewing coins in the parking meter?”

According to the policy, so long as journalists are conducting “the routine business of gathering news,” they are to be given “courtesy exemptions” from a myriad of posted parking restrictions. The types of “routine business” or assignments are not stipulated.

Working journalists in Los Angeles would not have to pay metered parking under the proposed policy. They could also ignore restrictions posted in time-limit parking zones, where parking is limited to one or more hours, and could park with impunity in preferential parking districts--usually neighborhoods where parking spaces for residents are at a premium.

In addition, reporters and cameramen could park in no-parking and commercial loading zones for a maximum of 20 minutes without being ticketed. In addition, during “major news events,” depending on the circumstances, news media personnel could even park in some no-stopping areas.

The news media would still be obligated to obey other Los Angeles parking regulations, including those which preclude parking near fire hydrants, in handicapped zones, in tow-away and taxi zones and in areas marked for street cleaning, Yates said.

In the past, the Los Angeles Police Department canceled parking citations issued to reporters and cameramen on assignment.

Police spokesman Cmdr. William Booth estimated that about 35 such tickets were suspended annually.

But about two years ago, after members of the Los Angeles Police Commission expressed concern over the propriety of “fixing” tickets issued to the press, the Police Department began turning away reporters and cameramen whose cars and vans had been cited, Booth said.

In San Diego, police officials routinely canceled parking tickets for the media. But last month Police Chief Bill Kolender was reprimanded, in part because excuses had been fabricated in order to dismiss parking tickets for friends, relatives and influential San Diegans including members of the media.