Parking Tickets

Baltimore is planning to hand over delinquent parking tickets to a Texas-based collections firm in an effort to recapture more than $100 million the city is owed in back fines and late penalties, city officials said yesterday. More than 107,000 vehicle owners with tickets that are at least six months overdue received notice from the city last week that they need to pay up or their cases will be turned over to the agency, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, for collection. For the first time, however, violators will be given the option of paying parking tickets on an installment plan and, as long as they continue to make those payments on time, will not incur additional late-payment penalties, city officials said.

Joe Mueller is a really nice guy, but almost everyone in Towson hates to see him coming.Why? Because Mueller can spot an expired meter half a block away and write a ticket in less than 10 seconds flat. He averages 30 to 50 tickets a day, five days a week. His record high is 104 in one day. In the six years that he's walked Towson's business district, he's probably tagged more than 40,000 parking violators.In fact, Mueller and his merry gang of meter men write more than $1 million in parking tickets a year in Baltimore County, or nearly half the $2.2 million the county collects.

Parking scofflaws, beware: Baltimore County is ready to roll out the wreckers.Determined to wring every penny it can out of those who fail to pay parking tickets, the county is sending letters to more than 300 motorists, warning that their vehicles might be confiscated if they don't pay up.Those letters -- aimed at county residents with three or more tickets, who owe a collective $235,000 -- are part of an aggressive enforcement effort expected to pull...

As Baltimore County officials move aggressively to step up collections from the growing legion of parking scofflaws, the Susan Meehlings of the world pose a formidable challenge.Meehling is the county's champion parking scofflaw, owing nearly $8,000 for 22 parking tickets. But the Eastwood woman, whose liquor store business failed last year -- and whose car was towed two years ago because of the tickets and sold for scrap -- said the county isn't likely to collect."I don't have anything for them to take.

I came to Baltimore from Latin America hoping to find revolution. I got one today -- battling the city's despotic parking regime.The rebels here look more like J-Crew models than a band of Sandinistas, and the upscale Federal Hill setting is a far cry from a Latin American hillside, where I spent more than two years covering civil strife for American newspapers.But the fight here is clearly as just: war against a government drunk with power.The big bad city government, you see, has decided to carpet-bomb our neighborhood with parking tickets.

ON BEHALF of parking ticketees everywhere I wish, like Spiro Agnew, to plead nolo contendere. There, is everyone happy? I once set a college record for most parking tickets in a single semester, and if anyone around here should be blushing, it ain't me, and maybe it shouldn't be those basketball players pursued by the University of Maryland student newspaper, the Diamondback.You read about this, didn't you? Yesterday we carried it on the front page of this very newspaper. The Diamondback wants to reveal names of basketball players at College Park who may have racked up big money in campus parking fines, and the university says, "Mind your own business."

Baltimore City Councilwoman Paula Johnson Branch, who amassed nine unpaid parking tickets in the past three months, was stranded at City Hall yesterday afternoon when her illegally parked car was booted by parking officials.Ms. Branch, who represents the 2nd District and heads a council committee that deals with parking issues, owes the city $304 in unpaid tickets, including the $24 boot fee.The boot, a metal device placed on a tire, immobilizes a car until the owner pays the outstanding tickets.

COLLEGE PARK -- The day after Maryland point guard Duane Simpkins publicly apologized for accepting an improper loan to pay campus parking fines, he received another ticket.Simpkins, a senior who sat out the final game of a three-game, NCAA-imposed suspension last night, received a $20 ticket Feb. 17 for parking in a space not assigned to him. According to parking records obtained by The Sun, he has received 17 tickets and incurred $290 in fines since he discussed this problem with coach Gary Williams in November.

A Rockville man died owing the Town of Union Bridge $16.His parking ticket, dated Dec. 1, 1978, is among two decades' worth of parking tickets crammed into dust-covered boxes in the town hall. Some parking tickets have been paid. Many haven't. Overdue tickets are assessed $5 monthly administrative fees.Nobody in town knows for sure how many tickets remain unpaid. Meter monitor Ellen Leppo stopped keeping track years ago."I got tired of keeping tally," she said.Hoping to collect on some of these unpaid tickets, town officials are launching a 30-day amnesty program.

When they talk about the mindlessness of bureaucracies, what they really mean is the thing that happened to me this week involving some parking tickets, for which the city of Baltimore owes me $52, and miraculously admits it and still will not pay me the money.Nobody denies this basic and remarkable fact of the $52 -- not the accounting Supervisor Kenneth Baker, and not the nice lady who works for him who creatively suggests I can go on breaking the various traffic laws to straighten our accounts, and certainly not the Bureau of Treasury Management, collection division, which recently sent a piece of mail to my house, entitled Overpayment Notice, which declares officially and for all to see:"Our records indicate an overpayment in the amount of $52."

A recent push by a city-hired collections agency to haul in roughly $132 million in overdue parking tickets has sparked complaints from some who say the fines - averaging $721 - are excessive. The agency, Linebarger, Goggan, Blair & Sampson, has collected $11.6 million for Baltimore in fines and late penalties from parking scofflaws since late 2006. In its latest collections effort, which started in February, the Texas-based agency sent out 80,000 notices to people with long-unpaid tickets.

This is how Jeffrey Davis reacted yesterday moments after a team of Baltimore parking agents slapped a shiny yellow boot on the left front wheel of his Ford Probe: "I don't know why I got a boot!" And then: "This doesn't make no sense!" Finally: "What else will go wrong?" What Davis did not notice (or appreciate) at first was that the metal lock on his wheel was a new device that gives him the option of removing it himself after paying parking tickets with a credit card over the telephone.

Jim Tudor Parking enforcement officer Baltimore County government Salary --$13.66 an hour Age --56 Years on the job --Two How he got started --Tudor retired from his job with General Motors after working there 33 years. Wanting to stay active, he took the job with parking enforcement. "I want to keep busy. This job keeps me walking." Typical day --Tudor works Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. After arriving at work he is assigned to a specific area in Baltimore County to patrol for parking violations.

Baltimore is planning to hand over delinquent parking tickets to a Texas-based collections firm in an effort to recapture more than $100 million the city is owed in back fines and late penalties, city officials said yesterday. More than 107,000 vehicle owners with tickets that are at least six months overdue received notice from the city last week that they need to pay up or their cases will be turned over to the agency, Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, for collection. For the first time, however, violators will be given the option of paying parking tickets on an installment plan and, as long as they continue to make those payments on time, will not incur additional late-payment penalties, city officials said.

THE PROBLEM -- Delivery trucks and construction vehicles routinely block the left lane of Calvert Street north of Pratt Street near Baltimore's Inner Harbor. This narrows a central route into downtown and causes traffic problems, sometimes backing cars onto Interstate 395 during the morning rush hour. THE BACKSTORY -- There are several no-parking and no-stopping signs along Calvert Street between Pratt and Baltimore streets, warning that illegally parked vehicles will be towed. The traffic problem is made worse by construction that takes up a lane of Calvert Street in that area.

NATIONAL Bush speaks in Southern Md. President Bush marked Labor Day at a union-operated maritime training center in Southern Maryland, telling mariners that he was striving to keep U.S. workers competitive by enacting permanent tax cuts, pressing to end dependence on foreign oil and preparing workers for 21st-century jobs. pg 1a Fast-food meals' many calories Most people underestimate the number of calories in fast-food meals, a big problem as portion sizes have ballooned, a new study has found.

Iwent to parking court this week to battle for justice, to preserve my honor and to avoid coughing up $52. Rather than hiring a lawyer, I served as my own advocate. My courtroom performance did not go exactly as I planned. It's safe to say I represent no threat to the livelihood of lawyers. At issue was whether I parked too close to a fire hydrant at the corner of Park Avenue and Mosher Street, a few doors away from my home. The ticket placed on my station wagon said I had failed to give the hydrant at least 15 feet leeway.

Parks bureau names new chief Hashawha Park manager Brad Rogers has been promoted to chief of the Bureau of Parks, effective Jan. 25. He moves into a vacancy created by the promotion of his predecessor Jeff Degitz to director of the Department of Recreation and Parks following Richard Soisson's retirement. A graduate of Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, Rogers, 35, has worked for the Carroll County Department of Recreation and Parks since 2001. He lives in Sykesville. Rogers will oversee the operations of the county's parks, including Hashawha Environmental Center, Piney Run Park and the Hap Baker Firearms Facility.

As if it's not annoying enough to pay a parking ticket the first time, thousands of Annapolis-area residents are being incorrectly charged late fees because of a record-keeping mix-up. The trouble started earlier this year when the city switched the companies it used to process parking tickets. City officials say the old company, Complus Data Innovations of Tarrytown, N.Y., failed to turn over about 45 days worth of records to its successor, Citation Management of Milwaukee. Complus officials deny withholding any information.

Troubled by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s fondness for fees -- including a $30 charge for each of the nearly 1 million times a year a Marylander fails to pay a parking or traffic ticket on time -- lawmakers grilled administration officials yesterday about whether a series of proposed higher charges for government services were tax increases in disguise. House Ways and Means Committee members tried to determine if several state agencies intend to recoup the cost of specific services through new or higher fees, or are looking instead to generate extra cash to help balance the state budget.