LOS ANGELES : Plan for Parking Ticket Contractor Dealt Setback

The quest to privatize city services took another licking Monday when a key Los Angeles City Council panel rejected Mayor Richard Riordan’s plan to hire a firm to issue parking tickets on the Westside.

On a 2-0 vote, the council’s Transportation Committee voted down a plan to seek bids for a private contractor to issue tickets for three years from Hollywood to the Pacific Palisades to Venice.

But a Riordan spokeswoman said the mayor’s office was not daunted by Monday’s vote and would press for approval of the plan by the full council.

Privatizing parking enforcement on the Westside would generate at least $9 million in extra revenue by transferring city ticketing crews working in that area to other parts of the city, Riordan argued.

Last week, a majority of the Los Angeles City Council, amid heavy moralizing about the dangers of privatization, attacked a private contract to pick up discarded Christmas trees. The council majority said the company had not taken care of the problem of removal of such trees from city streets.

Plans to test privatization of parking enforcement on the Westside had been showcased in Riordan’s 1994-’95 budget as an example of innovations to come from an administration run by a business entrepreneur.

But Councilman Nate Holden, chairman of the Transportation Committee, predicted Monday that private ticket-writers--who would win bonuses based on the number of tickets written--would hurt business by being overzealous.

Private parking enforcers also would be so profit-driven that they would be unwilling to help perform services that do not generate revenue, such as directing traffic and assisting in the towing of illegally parked vehicles, Holden said.

Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. also voted against the Riordan plan, and the committee urged instead that 105 new city parking-enforcement officers be hired.