Unpleasant Political Undertow : What would be wrong with a system of open and competitive bidding?

Connections pay at City Hall. A case in point: The right to operate official police garages is passed down from generation to generation by well-connected families. This private system of doing public business, documented by Times reporter Rich Connell, is unfair.

The question of who gets the lucrative business of towing away about 200,000 cars a year should be decided by open and competitive bidding for a fixed term. The opportunity to make hundreds of thousands of dollars should not be guaranteed on the basis of legacy and inheritance.

The towing operations should also be audited annually to determine which are doing good jobs, which have problems that can be easily corrected and which should be weeded out of the system for unsatisfactory performance.

Under the current arrangement, the city gets nothing from the companies that tow away and store illegally parked cars, abandoned vehicles and automobiles involved in crimes or accidents.

City Councilman Marvin Braude, the new chairman of the Public Safety Committee, now asks why these businesses can’t become a source of revenue, through some sort of franchise awarded under contracts that ensure a specified rate of return for the city. If towing companies paid a fixed fee of, say, $10 per car, the city would reap $2 million a year.

Braude has also challenged the appropriateness of the current system. The Police Department and Police Commission have traditionally approved, arguing that the police towing services have worked pretty well. That cozy arrangement gave no incentive for operators to show that the system could work better or in ways more favorable to the city.

Some family-owned businesses have held contracts for decades. The firms that have done good jobs shouldn’t lose city business. But there should be room for newcomers, and for improvement.

The Police Commission is also investigating. Both the commission and the council should insist on a fair and unbiased selection process and much greater oversight of the police garages.