Parking Tickets

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.

Ellicott City business owners, who have long suffered from the downtown's parking problems, now foresee a new and perhaps bigger problem: customers being overzealously ticketed for breaking one of the new parking rules planned for the area.Although they signed off on new parking policies that will be phased in next month -- including parking meters, enforcement of tow-away zones and parking tickets -- some business owners are hardly optimistic."The problem is we don't know what else to do," said Charlotte Willis, president of the Ellicott City Business Association and owner of Gateway Travel on Main Street.

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.

Kenny Hall is a night-shift guard at a prison, so he understands the importance of paying debts. That is why he showed up at the city's parking fines section at 7:30 a.m. yesterday -- an hour before the office opened.Mr. Hall, 31, was at the front of yesterday's line to take advantage of the city's second parking amnesty, which began Aug. 1. The program, last offered in the fall of 1992, allows parking scofflaws to pay off delinquent tickets without shelling out for the hundreds of dollars they owe in late fees.

If you've been holding onto a 6-year-old Baltimore City parking ticket, hoping that the hundreds of dollars in accumulated penalties would go away, today is the last day to take advantage of an experiment in benevolence that has made your dream come true.The city's 2-month-long amnesty program for parking tickets -- so far, a trial, one-time-only deal -- comes to an end today.Under the program, car owners with outstanding parking citations from 1986 through 1989 can just pay the ticket's face value -- and no penalties.

Joseph Moran rushed through his errands in the Towson courthouse yesterday and --ed back to his expired parking meter -- just in time to be handed an $18 ticket."

Back-to-School-Night Monday at Glenwood Middle School brought unwanted surprises to some parents who parked on the east side of Route 97 -- they received $24 parking tickets for parking in a zone labeled "No Stopping Anytime."It was a surprise because it's customary for people to park on both sides of Route 97, despite the signs that most of us probably never noticed. A large meeting at Bushy Park Elementary School and practice for several soccer teams left only a few parking spaces at the middle school.

Annapolis merchants want the City Council to abolish metered parking downtown and slash the cost of parking tickets, undoing the most controversial parts of a new parking plan enacted in July.The increased parking meter rates in the plan have sharply cut into their businesses, they plan to tell the council's Economic Matters Committee tonight."The sense is people are more concerned about the parking meters than what they're shopping for," said Ann Widener, president of the Business Association for Maryland Ave. and State Circle.

James A. Holechek Sr. may be Baltimore's patron saint of procrastinating motorists.The veteran public relations man, backing up his widely reported offer, has so far paid the fines of nine of the 32 car owners nabbed for expired tags at the Mondawmin Motor Vehicle Administration office on July 1."It makes you feel good, and that's the bottom line," he said.Police officials said two foot patrol officers assigned to the mall have learned to be on the lookout the first of each month for cars with tags that expired the day before.