Unpaid Parking Fines May Have Cost L.A. $500,000 : Audit: The city controller blames the shortage on sloppy accounting and monitoring procedures by the office of parking and an outside contractor.

An audit of the city of Los Angeles’ system for collecting parking ticket fines found accounting deficiencies that may have resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in uncollected funds, officials said Wednesday.

The review by City Controller Rick Tuttle blamed the city’s office of parking management, which issues parking tickets, and the outside contractor that processes the tickets for the city--Lockheed Information Management Services Co.

“This is a serious situation,” Tuttle said. “This city has been known historically as a city where you don’t fix tickets. We have to keep it that way.”

The audit says the tickets issued by the city and collected by Lockheed are off by about $500,000, indicating sloppy accounting procedures and inadequate monitoring of Lockheed by the city.

In addition, the audit found inadequate supervision of the Lockheed employees who decide whether to cancel tickets. (People who believe that they have been unfairly cited can call a telephone number printed on the back of parking tickets; a valid excuse can win a cancellation.)

The lack of oversight creates the possibility that tickets could be improperly canceled.

“These deficiencies and failures could result in serious revenue losses, abuse in ticket suspensions and overpayment to Lockheed,” according to a summary of the audit, which covered July, 1990, to March, 1992.

As of Sept. 30, 1992, there were more than 5 million unpaid parking tickets. The city now puts a hold on the registrations of vehicles with outstanding tickets but has difficulty tracking down motorists with expired registrations. Parking officers also “boot” cars with more than five tickets but many violators are missed. Tuttle said more aggressive collection methods are needed, and suggested that the contractor could hire attorneys to track down scofflaws.

Parking Administrator Bob Yates said his department will review the findings, although he does not believe they are as serious as Tuttle contends. Inadequate staffing is one reason that oversight has not been as tight as it should be, he said.

Representatives for Lockheed did not respond to requests for a comment on the audit. The New Jersey company, a division of the giant defense contractor Lockheed Corp., recently had a contract canceled in New York City when a city investigation disclosed that aides to Mayor David Dinkins gave special treatment to Lockheed when it sought to take over most of the city’s parking operations.