Parking Ticket Bill Parked In the Council

A bill that would allow some businesses to pay reduced fines on certain parking tickets is coming under fire, delaying its passage.

The bill would make permanent an existing voluntary program that allows businesses to waive the right to contest parking tickets in exchange for having some fines reduced or eliminated. Proponents of the bill say the reductions are based on the percentage of tickets that businesses on average successfully get dismissed, meaning that the city collects the same amount of revenue as it would have anyway but with less strain on the traffic court and on businesses.

"The issue is whether we want to make it a little easier for businesses that have to make regular deliveries to operate," a sponsor of the bill, City Council Member David Yassky, said yesterday in an interview.

At a hearing yesterday, Glen Bolofsky, the president of ParkingTicket.com, a company that charges members to contest parking tickets on their behalf, testified that the proposal would increase traffic by encouraging more parking violations and confer an unfair advantage on businesses.

Several council members raised similar concerns, including Lewis Fidler, who said he was uneasy with granting an "institutionalized plea bargaining system" to businesses that the general public does not enjoy, leading the committee to postpone a planned vote on the bill.