Audit Finds Dept. of Finance Fails To Collect Even After Giving Discounts
to Commercial Fleets; FedEx, Verizon Top List of Fines Overdue
City Comptroller John C. Liu today announced that an audit of the City Department of Finance’s (DOF) collection of parking tickets discovered that the agency has failed to go after millions of dollars in fines owed by companies with delivery fleets. The DOF gives these same companies discounts on their tickets.
“It’s
bad enough that people feel like they’re constantly blitzed with
parking tickets,” Comptroller Liu said. “It’s absolutely galling to
now find that the City lets big companies off the hook on millions in
parking tickets. At the minimum, the City should be as efficient
collecting money from big companies as it is from residents and small
business owners, who apparently never get a break.”
The
DOF manages two programs that offer commercial fleets discounts on
parking tickets. The NYC Delivery Solutions (Stipulated Fine) program
covers companies that make quick deliveries or service calls, such as
private mail couriers. The DOF’s Commercial Abatement Program enrolls
commercial fleets that are
not engaged in time-sensitive services, such as plumbing repair companies.
To
enroll in the discount programs, companies first must pay all their
outstanding tickets, waive their right to challenge future tickets,
and agree to pay fines within 15 days. The DOF can remove any company
that fails to abide by the agreement from the program and levy fines on
them without the discount.
Comptroller
Liu’s audit found many companies that did not live up to the agreement
and ignored large outstanding debts on their parking tickets
without any penalty from the DOF.
Private
citizens, whose vehicles can be towed or booted if they fail to contest
or pay $350 in tickets within 100 days, were once able to obtain
discounts on parking tickets. The DOF canceled this discount program
for private citizens as of January 2012.
$6,421,588 Overdue but No Enforcement
As
of April 2012, the DOF was holding $9.3 million in tickets, of which
two-thirds had gone unpaid for more than 30 days. In fact, of $6.4
million in overdue uncollected fines, more than half — $3.7 million —
had gone unpaid for more than six months.
Companies
that ignore their tickets and continue business as usual feel no
repercussion, because DOF does not use its powers to strike them
from the discount programs and pursue collections.
If
the DOF removed delinquent companies from the discount programs, it
could pursue civil judgments, deny vehicle registrations, and tow
vehicles
with unpaid parking tickets. Moreover, if the DOF took companies out
of the program, it could charge them the full ticket amounts — resulting
in more revenue for the City. For example, auditors randomly selected
20 companies (10 from each program) from the
population of 110 participants that each owed more than $10,000 in
fines. These 20 participants had a total of $923,284 outstanding
discounted fines. If removed from the program the firms would have to
pay their original fines — $3,979,581 — resulting in $3
million more in revenue to the City.
The
audit also found that the DOF did not collect all outstanding fines
before enrolling companies in the discount program, as required. The
audit examined a sample of 20 companies in the programs and found that
the DOF failed to collect outstanding fines, totaling $195,886, from
seven before admitting them to the discount program.
A copy of the audit is attached to this e-mail and also available for download at:
http://www.comptroller.nyc.
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