Parking Fines

The Baltimore City Council is set to vote today on a proposal to create an amnesty for parking violators that would allow anyone to pay old parking tickets without any penalties or interest. The two-day grace period would kick in before Sept. 1, when the cash-strapped city will raise parking fines in an effort to generate $3.8 million more a year to help pay for city services. The fine increase, approved by the council May 27, would raise the fines for a parking meter violation from $18 to $21 and would include a variety of other increases for other offenses.

In Baltimore County City man gets life with no parole for home invasion, killing TOWSON - A Baltimore man was sentenced yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court to life without parole for his involvement in an Owings Mills home invasion and murder last year. Irvin Patrick Browne Jr., 19, formerly of the 1800 block of N. Dallas St., was the third man to be convicted for the Feb. 26, 2002, crime. Prosecutors say he and another man terrorized a group of Owings Mills college students and fatally shot Dimas Rodriguez, 20. Prosecutors say Browne was the shooter.

THE CITY COUNCIL'S tentative decision to increase parking fines to up to $40 may indeed produce $5 million for the badly depleted municipal coffers. But it fails to address the real issue: a desperate shortage of short-term parking, particularly in the Inner Harbor area. The City Council ought to mandate municipal traffic planners, the Parking Authority and the Downtown Partnership to come up with quick and innovative ways to create more one-hour metered parking downtown. "If you just need to run in somewhere to pick up something, it's very, very difficult to find a space," acknowledges Downtown Partnership's Michele Whelley.

The City Council gave preliminary approval last night to legislation that would boost city parking fines by as much as 40 percent as a way to bring the cash-strapped city government more revenue. The final vote on the measure is scheduled Monday. City Councilman Robert W. Curran's bill would raise fines for violation of parking meter laws to $25 from $18, boost residential parking fines to $40 from $25, and raise other fines for parking violators. Curran said the increases could bring the city another $5 million a year.

Baltimore officials are investigating claims that a former city worker cheated scores of drivers by pocketing cash in bogus deals that were supposed to give discounts on parking fines. The parking fine collector -- whose name was not released -- issued paperwork to drivers who owed large parking fines so that they could renew their license plates with the state Motor Vehicle Administration, which is normally impossible without paying all fines, according to city officials. But the residents later complained they had been ripped off -- often by hundreds or thousands of dollars each -- when the city notified them that their fines still existed and had grown by $16 per month in penalties.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Amusement parks in California would be subject to government inspection and tougher fines under a measure overwhelmingly approved by the state Assembly, two years to the day after a student plunged to her death on a water slide.California, with its many amusement parks, has one of the worst safety records in the nation. Fourteen people have died since 1973 at amusement parks here, compared with one person in Florida during the same time period.Although the state regulates ski lifts, traveling carnivals and elevators, California is one of only four states that do not regulate permanent amusement parks.

Nearly three years after the student newspaper at the University of Maryland, College Park sought records of parking fines of student athletes, the state's highest court yesterday told the school it must turn them over.In a unanimous 24-page opinion, the Court of Appeals said student basketball players' accumulated campus parking fines and correspondence between the university and the National Collegiate Athletic Association on a player's disciplinary violations are not what the federal government had in mind when it said education records must be kept private.

Judges of the state's highest court pointedly grilled the lawyer for the University of Maryland yesterday as she argued that federal law bars the school administration from releasing records of campus parking fines assessed to student athletes.Three of the seven judges challenged Dawna Cobb's assertion that parking fine records are educational records protected by federal law, asking why they weren't considered criminal records, which would be public.One judge wondered if it is fair to other Marylanders that the university guards the secrecy of student parking fine records but tells the Motor Vehicle Administration about other unpaid violations.

PLENTY OF things deserve the protection of confidentiality. Parking fines are not among them.When parking spaces are as rare as they are at University of Maryland College Park, the competition for finding one can be as fierce as an NCAA basketball play-off.So imagine how students, faculty and administrators must have felt to learn a couple of years ago that a basketball player had found his own way of shutting out the competition by parking pretty much as he pleased -- accumulating more than $8,000 in fines in the process.