Tickets Worth Tens of Millions : Chicago in a Jam in Effort to Collect Parking Fines

Windy City officials wish it were as easy to receive as it is to give.

Each week, Chicago parking meter attendants and police officers give away an average of 75,000 parking tickets--but the city does not receive revenue from nearly that many.

In fact, Chicagoans are ignoring their parking tickets by the millions. And, because of a chaotic collection system, they often do not get caught.

“There is no ingrained respect for the system,” said James T. Malleck, traffic division chief in Chicago’s Law Department. “People believe they are born with a birthright to ignore the first three or four parking tickets they get.”

“There is a part of the population that won’t pay (parking tickets) unless you come in and take their first born,” said Douglas Ellis, deputy director of Chicago’s parking management bureau.

Of the 4 million tickets issued annually by meter attendants and Chicago policemen, only about one-quarter are paid voluntarily. The rest become part of a backlog worth tens of millions of dollars in revenue owed to the city.

But just how many tickets? Just how much money? Ask and hear the confusion.

“I’ve heard talk about between 30 million and 40 million,” said Thomas R. Fitzgerald, chief judge of the Traffic Court. “But who knows? Oh, I suppose somebody knows.”

“A potential of $70 million goes uncollected (annually), assuming all tickets are issued correctly,” said Richard L. Smiley, deputy director of the parking management bureau and in charge of efforts to bring order to the current chaos.

“In 1985, the city had a backlog of 34 million unpaid tickets pending in Traffic Court, with almost no effective procedures for attempting to collect them,” said a Special Commission on the Administration of Justice in Cook County, in a report released 14 months ago.

An official in the Cook County clerk’s office, where much of the ticket processing is done, said that between 1978 and 1984 there were 17 million uncollected tickets worth about $110 million in fines.

‘No One Knows How Many’

“The truth is nobody knows,” said Judson H. Miner, Chicago’s city attorney. “Prior to 1983 record-keeping was abysmal and no one cared. So no one knows how many are out there. It’s one of the great mysteries.”

What is not a mystery is what people are doing with the yellow citations they find under windshield wipers.

“Voluntary payment slid from 47% a few years ago to about 20%,” Malleck said.

There are signs of the chaos throughout the parking enforcement system.

For example, Illinois law requires the city to notify taxicab companies and car rental agencies within 120 days after their vehicles receive parking tickets. The companies must then give the city the name and address of the driver so he or she can be charged for the violation. But, city officials said, this is not being done.

Record-Keeping Sloppy

Computers are another source of confusion. Parking tickets are recorded in two computer systems, one run by the Cook County Circuit Court clerk’s office and one run by the City of Chicago’s Revenue Department. The two computers have difficulty communicating with each other, so record-keeping is sloppy. City and county sources said 75% of 81,000 people who paid parking tickets during a city amnesty period last year received credit in the Circuit Court computer but not in the city’s.

Violators who are willing to pay their fines have some options.

Those who pay their fines by mail pay full price, as much as $100 per ticket, depending on the violation. But the city offers a discount to violators with multiple tickets if they are willing to endure the corridors of Traffic Court, a bustling downtown building teeming with characters.

“When people come to court they are immediately met by a city attorney who offers them a deal they shouldn’t refuse,” Malleck said. “Pay now without going to court and you’ll only be charged half the price of the parking ticket.” Most people choose this option, and the city collects between $8,000 and $9,000 a day this way.

Ticket Might Be Dismissed

What these people are not told, however, is that, if they go to court, they might not have to pay anything. If the police officer or meter attendant who issued the ticket is not in court, the ticket is dismissed. And police, who write 75% of the city’s tickets each year, are not required to show up in court for parking tickets, Police Department sources said. This informal policy leads judges to order mass dismissals of parking tickets.

“When policemen are in court, they focus on courtrooms where major traffic violations are being heard,” a city official said.

“If everybody who came to court (for a parking ticket) demanded a trial,” Malleck said, “this building would slide into the Chicago River.”

“It doesn’t seem to me to make any sense at all to have a judge who’s paid $75,000 a year or more deciding parking tickets,” Judge Fitzgerald said.

Chicago is preparing to move its parking tickets from the courts to a city-run non-judicial administrative agency similar to systems already operating in other cities.

One reason for the delay, said Smiley, who is in charge of creating a comprehensive parking management system for the city, is trying to work with the 11 different city departments and agencies involved in parking regulation, ticket writing, collecting and processing.

‘It’s Out of Control’

“Right now it is chaotic. You have all those different agencies . . . and it’s out of control,” said Smiley, a Chicago police sergeant, former bodyguard for the late Mayor Harold Washington and a one-time schoolteacher. The new agency “is going to reinstill respect for the system and it should increase revenues 10% to 15% in the first year,” he said.

That could be difficult. Parking tickets have historically led to scandal and political corruption and have tainted public careers from New York to Beverly Hills.

And, Chicago being Chicago, Smiley may have his hands full. For example, some members of the City Council proposed earlier this year that any new parking ticket management program include a provision allowing them to cancel traffic tickets without hearings.

That, Smiley said, will not be part of the new system. “This program will be like Caesar’s wife,” he said, “above reproach.”