THE NATION - News from June 21, 2009

Tom Feddor has the lowest vehicle license plate number in Illinois.

If you’re thinking “1,” think lower.

The plate number, which has been in Feddor’s family for almost 40 years, is “0,” as in zero, zilch, nada.

But there’s a problem. The city of Chicago has his number. It zeroed in by mailing him dozens of ticket notices for parking-related violations dating to July 2008. More than 80 ticket notices issued to Feddor’s 0 plates on his Range Rover are listed on a city website, including 38 this year.

The violations are for things such as parking at expired meters; parking with the motor running in the Wrigley Field bus-permit zone; parking during street-cleaning hours; running stop signs or traffic signals; operating a hazardous dilapidated vehicle; failing to display a residential parking permit; blocking access to an alley, driveway or fire lane; and parking a truck, recreational vehicle, bus or taxi on a residential street.

Bad guy with clout, this Feddor, huh?

Well, no. None of the tickets were placed on his vehicle, which was nowhere near the scenes of the alleged infractions.

A glitch occurred at the Chicago Department of Revenue involving Feddor’s 0 plates being used during the testing of ticketing equipment. The error prompted the cascade of ticket notices to land in his mailbox, city officials determined after launching an internal investigation based on inquiries from the Tribune.

Feddor was unsuccessful in earlier efforts to get help from the Revenue Department and the Department of Administrative Hearings, he said.

One hearing officer, Zipporah Lewis, made several calls on Feddor’s behalf. But “the people she encountered at the other end of the phone seemed to be annoyed and bothered by her. Most tried to quickly end the call,” Feddor said.

It turned out that some city parking enforcement aides punched in 0 when testing their electronic ticket-issuing devices, Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh said. Officials weren’t aware that there actually was a 0 plate or that Feddor was receiving tickets, Walsh said in response to the Tribune inquiry.

“The test violations should have been dismissed in the database,” Walsh said.

Feddor will be refunded for any payments made on tickets issued erroneously, Walsh said. And officials are making sure than registered plate numbers will not be used for testing.

Feddor said he filed challenges to most of the tickets and trekked to the city’s administrative courthouse downtown about every three weeks with notices in hand. The hearing officers dismissed almost all of them, but it wasn’t how Feddor preferred to spend his time.

“Almost every judge’s answer to the problem was to get rid of the plates,” Feddor said. But that suggestion had zero value to him.

Feddor, 39, a Realtor who lives in Chicago, enjoys the distinction of having a license plate number lower than the governor’s.

The highly prized 0 license plate was originally assigned in 1971 to Feddor’s grandfather Robert Lamkin, a dairy farmer magnate and businessman from Watson, Ill.

In a 1999 letter to the editor published in the Tribune, Lamkin’s daughter, Nancy Lamkin Olson, wrote: “Whenever someone would comment on his plate and say, ‘You must be someone important,’ my dad would reply, ‘No, I’m just nothin’.’ ”

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jhilkevitch@tribune.com