tonymcewing's Blog

I don't know how many of you have ever been caught up in a governmental bureaucratic nightmare but, if you have, you know how scary it can be and how impossible it can be to straighten things out or even get anyone to listen to you. My nightmare begain with a parking ticket I received in the city of Los Angeles in late January. That, of course, was irritating enough. No one likes getting a parking ticket. Making matters worse, I had just parked on this street, (which I will call Elm for the purposes of this blog), not two weeks before that. It was legal to do so at that time. Apparently, a few days later, signs went up on "Elm" street, forbidding anyone without the proper permit to park on the street after 6pm. I parked about 5pm, never noticing the signs and found the ticket on my windshield when I emerged two hours later. It was an expensive mistake--$45.

As annoyed as I was, I of course paid the ticket on time by check. In fact, the city cashed the check exactly 21 days after I was issued the ticket, which was the deadline for paying the citation. Fine! That was taken care of. Over and done with! Little did I know, this was just the beginning of the nightmare. About a month and a half later, I received a letter from the Parking Violations Department of Los Angles informing me that, since I had neglected to pay my ticket on time, the fine had been increased from $45 to some ridiculous amount. I was furious! I couldn't believe what I was reading. I immediately went online and printed out a copy of the check the city had cashed in February. Then I called the number on the letter the city sent me. That was chapter two of my nightmare. I was on hold for 45 minutes before a human being finally came on the line. I explained my situation to the woman, who told me she could help. She instructed me to mail a photocopy of my cashed check in the same envelope the city had provided for me to send my increased fine and everything would be taken care of. But the city had to receive the information within 15 days. Once received, I would get a letter confirming I was right and they were wrong. I mailed the letter the next day. Fine! That was taken care of. Over and done with! Or so I thought.

This month, I received a third letter from the Parking Violations Department. But this was no ordinary letter. It was downright terrifying and threatening. It stated that because I had failed to pay the citation, my case had now been turned over to a collections agency. In other wods, we're getting ready to ruin your credit unless you pay up. Oh yeah, did I mention the fine had almost tripled to $124 now. The letter also screamed that the city had notified the Department of Motor Vehicles not to renew my registration until the fine was paid. And the letter threatened to deduct the amount from any tax refund I was due from the state and seize my vehicle by putting a boot on it. By this time, I was ready to explode. I couldn't imagine how they could be so incompetent. What had they done with the letter containing a photocopy of the check the city cashed two months ago? If I did this to someone else, wouldn't I be arrested and charged with extortion? That's when I did something that most people couldn't do because they don't have the same access. I called the head of the city's parking department directly. Of course, he knew I worked for FOX 11 and by the end of the next day, my ticket had been cancelled and my $45 refunded. Thing is, that isn't what I was looking for. I just wanted the city to acknowledge it made a mistake, that I had paid my fine on time, and stop harrassing me! Cancellation of the ticket meant the harrassment would stop for me, but I wondered what would happen to an ordinary citizen who didn't have FOX 11 news behind his or her name.

It didn't take me long to find out. When I told a close friend about my experience, she recounted to me her own horror story with the city parking department that took six months to straighten out. SIX MONTHS! The city browbeat her so much with threats to ruin her credit, seize her car and block her registration, that she was a nervous wreck and had all but decided she would pay the parking deparment money she didn't owe, just to get the city off her back. There is something fundamentally wrong when a city department is so mired in such bureaucratic ineptness, that it turns the lives of basically honest, law-abiding citizens into a lving hell. The parking department does have field offices throughout the city where you can appear in person to plead your case, but they are open basically 9 to 5. Most people are at work during those hours, which means they'd have to take time off, which many people can't afford to do. Nor should they have to when it's so evident that the city is in error. And there's no guarantee that appearing at one of the field offices will solve the problem.

My nightmare with the Los Angeles Parking Violations Department has been over for a week now. But I still wonder how many other people out there have been tortured by one government agency or another without ever getting any satisfactory resolution?