Time marches on: Parking meters in political dispute

By John Howard - Capitol Weekly | 08/21/13 12:00 AM PST
(Editor's Note: The following story appeared originally in California City News.)

Most people know little about parking meters except that they always run fast.

But those meters have figured in a political dispute this year pitting motorists against the cities, the cities against the state and the drivers against just about everybody. Gov. Brown, meanwhile, has weighed in on the side of the drivers.

At issue is what happens when a driver parks at a broken meter? How is the charge set? Does the motorist get a ticket, even though the elapsed time is unknown? Some drivers say they get gouged and they have no recourse. Some cities say the meters are deliberately broken so drivers will escape paying.

For the cities, the answer is simple: It’s up to them to decide...

...The governor disagreed.

He signed legislation, AB 61 by Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Los Angeles, requiring the cities to have a uniform policy statewide. The new law takes effect Jan. 1 and will remain in effect for three years unless otherwise renewed by lawmakers. It allows a motorist to park in a space with a broken meter for up to the maximum amount of time set by parking enforcement officials, without getting a ticket.

Gatto said his bill was prompted in part by an NBC report in L.A. that showed the city had issued 17,000 parking tickets in a single year for meters that were reported as malfunctioning.

“’Local control’ does not provide a right to fleece taxpayers,” he said in a written statement following the governor’s Aug. 12 action. “The question of parking at a broken meter should not be up for review or reconsideration every six months, nor should motorists be subject to confusing ordinances as they drive from city to city.”

Traditionally, the cities operate the meters, enforce the parking ordinances, set the rates and decide how to handle the money they collect. It’s been like that since the 1930s, when traffic-clogged, revenue-starved cities saw the potential in parking meters. In a city like Los Angeles, with some 38,000 parking meters and some $150 million annually from parking tickets, this means big money and major government activity that interacts in a direct way with the citizenry. At any one time, perhaps 10 percent of the meters are broken, although the breakage rate for the new electronic meters is far less -- of the thousands of new meters only a handful have broken, the city says.

In crowded, space-limited San Francisco, parking enforcement is aggressive, partly because it is seen as an anti-congestion tool. In San Francisco, they take parking violations seriously, with fines ranging from $46 for a simple transgression, $74 for an expired meter in the downtown core and $880 for misusing a handicapped placard.

The cities see parking enforcement as part of local jurisdiction. When meters are broken, a motorist can leave a note on the car explaining the situation, and that typically avoids a potential ticket – if the motorist doesn’t stay in the space longer than the legal limit that would have applied with the meter in place.

A flickr user, Atwater Village Newbie, posted this photo of a
broken parking meter, along with the question,
"Why are so many parking meters along Glendale Boulevard in
Atwater Village so often out of order?"
(Photo from www.flickr.com/)

The problem is, the meters get broken and aren’t speedily fixed.

“We have a severe problem with the meters always being broken,” said Luis Lopez, a board director of the Chamber of Commerce in Atwater Village, a community of about 16,000 in northeast Los Angeles. “The city of Los Angeles is not very quick to fix those meters. There could be a $250 fine for parking at a broken meter and the city wouldn’t fix them.” The high fine and the broken meters discourage people from parking and patronizing businesses, which is at the heart of Lopez’s concern.

“Parking is a big issue in our community. As far as business owners go, we rely on good parking,” he added.

Last year, a bill similar to Gatto’s AB 61 was approved, SB 1388 by Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, which allowed cities to participate in to a statewide parking meter enforcement regulation. But Gatto said loopholes in the law enabled cities to restrict parking, prompting the latest bill.

The cities had signed off on the earlier legislation, because the locals could decide whether to opt in – or not.

“Triple A came to us because their members were expressing frustration because they didn’t know what the statewide policy was,” said Jennifer Whiting of the League of California Cities. “In some cities you could park, in some cities you couldn’t park. In particular, Mr. Gattos’ bill was promoted in the L.A. area, and L.A. had taken a second look at the ordinance.”

After receiving complaints from motorists, the L.A. City Council repealed the ordinance allowing ticketing at broken meters, but left open the possibility of revisiting the issue after six months. Gatto’s bill bars L.A. from looking at the issue gain in six months...

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Mike Gatto chairs the Appropriations Committee in the California Assembly. He represents Burbank, Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Atwater Village, East Hollywood, Franklin Hills, Hollywood Hills, Los Feliz, and Silver Lake.