Portland owed millions in unpaid parking tickets
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PORTLAND, Ore. – As Portland leaders grapple with budget issues, the city is owed a hefty sum of money from drivers who violate parking laws.
There is currently $42 million dollars in unpaid parking tickets in Multnomah County, much of which would come to the city of Portland. It’s a lot of money, especially when you consider how that would help cover the $25 million in budget cuts Portland’s new mayor is asking city bureaus to make.
KATU decided to shine the light on how our parking ticket system operates. We found some of the barriers preventing the city and county court system from bringing that delinquent money in to government coffers.
One of the key issues is communication, or lack thereof, between the city's Parking Enforcement division, which issues the tickets and the county/state courts, which enforce and collect unpaid tickets. The city and courts split parking ticket revenue 50/50.
Each week the Multnomah County Circuit Court gives the city a list of hundreds of license plates for cars that could be towed for unpaid fines. But the city does not actively patrol for those cars and trucks.
If a parking patrol enforcement officer happens to come across a car on the list they still have to make sure the person who racked up the tickets actually still owns the vehicle.
"We have to verify the registration for the vehicle," said Portland Bureau of Transportation spokeswoman Cheryl Kuck. By the time that happens and a tow truck is dispatched, the car could be gone.
| License State | Amount Due |
| Oregon | $10,095 |
| California | $10,076 |
| Oregon | $8,900 |
| Oregon | $8,394 |
| Oregon | $6,927.43 |
| New Mexico | $6,639 |
| Oregon | $6,578.43 |
| Oregon | $6,212.75 |
| Oregon | $6,192 |
| Oregon | $6,012 |
Finding the cars is often not as simple as knocking on the owner's door. We tried to find the person who has the most unpaid parking tickets in the last three years.
She's a 22-year-old driver from Beaverton who drove a Chevy Malibu while racking up 64 tickets worth $10,095. Our research shows she's now living in Utah.
When we went the address for the car that's second on the list with 47 unpaid tickets, we found former owner Paul Crabtree.
"That's a car I sold two years ago. Reported it to DMV, it’s not my car anymore,” Crabtree said. “The other person didn't register it so they are in violation of that as well. They are scum bags.”
Further complicating the effort to collect unpaid tickets is the fact that refusing to pay is not a crime.
"That would be a significant incentive for collection activity to take place, but it's probably not going to happen," said Doug Bray, Multnomah County Court Administrator. "The Legislature is very resistant to elevating parking citations to that level."
A police officer can't arrest a driver for unpaid tickets and a judge doesn't have the power to take away a driver’s license. Even if a parking patrol officer succeeds in having a car towed, there is nothing to stop the owner of the car from paying the fine to get the car back and continue driving without paying all the previous tickets.
Multnomah County court officials tracked 124,447 tickets issued within a six month window in 2010. The court reports an 85 percent collection rate in the first six months, 90 percent after 12 months, and 92 percent after 18 months.
New strategy in Seattle
Seattle has turned to a new tactic to collect parking fines. In July 2011, the city launched a program with New Jersey-based Paylock to boot cars that belong to people with four or more unpaid parking tickets. The boot locks the car’s wheels and prevents someone from driving it away.
Seattle parking enforcement officers patrol city streets with two vans equipped with an instrument that is capable of license plate recognition. In the first year of the program the city brought in $2.2 million by booting 75 cars a week.
Seattle currently has $57,874,199 in outstanding parking fines. That includes the initial fines, plus penalties and interest owed to the city.
The compliance rate for paying tickets in Seattle was 77.5 percent in 2011, the most recent data available.
Paylock also approached the city of Portland, offering to track down our scofflaws and their revenue, but the Rose City turned them down. Portland would rather tow the car and free up a parking spot.
"I don't even know if our parking enforcement officers would have the authority to drive around and identify through some sort of pinging device a license plate that has some sort of unpaid citation," said Kuck.
Trying to fix the problem in Portland
The amount of unpaid parking tickets could soon be going up. Just last week the city and court raised parking rates on seven types of fines.
| License State | Number of tickets |
| Oregon | 64 |
| Oregon | 47 |
| Oregon | 41 |
| Oregon | 38 |
| Oregon | 37 |
| Oregon | 34 |
| Oregon | 33 |
| Oregon | 31 |
| Oregon | 31 |
| Oregon | 31 |
When fines aren't paid, the court system does have some power to compel people to pay; the court works with the Oregon Department of Revenue to go after the scofflaw's tax refunds. Unpaid tickets also stay on a driver's credit for 20 years and the court has contracts with three collection agencies to go after the debt.
Despite those efforts, the problem seems to be getting worse. The $42 million in unpaid fines currently on the books is $18 million more than five years ago.
$8.8 million of the current balance has been declared "inactive". That means the court system has tried to get it but exhausted all of their techniques.
Dana Haynes, spokesman for Portland Mayor Charlie Hales, said the mayor’s office is interested in the results of our reporting.
"Denying people services and cutting services is not an optimal way to do anything,” he said. “Looking at ways to raise money that makes sense is absolutely the first level, that's the low hanging fruit."
I paid parking tickets in Idaho. They were $3 and written on an envelope, so you could just put the cash in it and drop it in one of many boxes around the city. No reason not to, but when a ticket can be over $100, and if one of the handicap patrol comes along, they threaten $1500 fines even in places not open to the public.
The reason why there are so many unpaid parking tickets is because the Portland city government uses predatory parking enforcement practices to fill up their slush funds.
Yeah the city will get the $ and blow right through it.......
I do not understand the table
Remember the story of the cop who was in a patrol car and would not help with a drugstore robbery? what a city
Parking tickets downtown are just a cost of business for daily delivery drivers downtown.
I got a parking ticket in downtown Portland in 2006, for which I paid the fine within two months. FIVE YEARS LATER I started getting mail and phone calls from a collection agency engaged by Multnomah County to collect on unpaid parking tickets. I spoke to a woman at the Multnomah County court who shamelessly told me that even though I had paid the ticket (which she was able to confirm), because it had been turned over to collectors I now owed for the fees the county incurred in hiring the collection agency. I informed her that it was the county's choice to try to collect on a ticket THAT HAD ALREADY BEEN PAID and I had no intention of paying for the county's mistake. Even after sending in a copy of my cancelled check (twice) to the collection agency and speaking to countless "supervisors" and "managers" I continued to receive harrassing letters and phone calls from the collection agency for nearly two years.
Perhaps KATU should investigate how much EXTRA money the city and county have made collecting from people who already paid their parking fines but paid again just to get the collectors to quit harassing them.
@La Louve ha ha I got a warrent out for my arrest years ago   I had promptly paid the expired meter fine but some office jockey did a "clerical error". must happen alot
@La Louve Wow, that is some nerve that they expect you to pay for their error....! That's definitely a fee that they need to eat!
@La Louve ......amazing story. Email KATU directly. They may just do a pice on this kind of stupidity !
The real crime here isn't that people don't pay their parking tickets. It is that the city of Portland does research to find out how short the parking limit needs to be to make the maximum over limit situations to write tickets for. The city of Portland limits how many private parking spaces there can be and works in collusion with the parking garages to make it expensive to go downtown.Â
 Some time ago, when there was a meter maid strike the city of Portland admitted it was losing $87,000 a day. you think they're ever going to give that kind of money up. It's just another rap of the people the city of Portland has perpetrated and nobody does anything to replace the city commissioners.Â
here's what's needed. An initiative petition that says all ticket revenue goes to the kicker fund and returned to the people.Â
Being law enforcement constantly tells us it's not about the money this should be no problem.
When your car is stolen and ditched in a no parking zone are you as the owner liable?
You mean all my hurry to pay these over the years wasn't even worth the bother?Â
They're owed $42 MILLION dollars and they want to raise the fines on everyone else because they're TOO DAMN LAZY to get out and collect? (Oh, it's just too difficult! I might break a sweat!) They should be out there as soon as the fines are one day past due.
And what's this about the City and Courts splitting the fines? Something stinks.
So I go to parking ticket court the guy before me says " I own the business there and am in and out all day"
The parking patrol guy says " he seen me coming and went out to move his car. So I couldn't give him a ticket.
The business guy says again "I am in and out due to my business.
The Judge said " It looks like you have had 4 tickets in the last 2 years?
You do realize I have the authority to charge the maximum of $500.00."
The guy said " Your honor I would like to just pay the ticket and be done with it"
The Judge said " Oh no we are way past that now " and charged the guy $275.00Â
For a $25.00 ticket..
Then they said NEXT it was my turn....Â
I don't feel the least bit of sympathy considering I got a $210.00 parking ticket for being in an unmarked/ "invisible" spot. (It literally said "invisible" on the ticket.) I discovered later the same officer was giving out tickets left and right in this unmarked spot while repeatedly changing the street sections on tickets to make it look like it was different areas. When I questioned this, I was told I had no choice but to pay. The City of Portland forces anyone with a ticket to pay and then go through a 6 (plus) month appeal process. More Power to Those NOT Paying Tickets ! It's amazing to me a moving violation or driving around with an unregistered vehicle is less than parking in an invisible spot. (Intersection: SW Moody and Bancroft Street in the South Waterfront District -- a section with no meters)Â
@Lisa Lisa the google maps street view shows nothing but No parking in this block signs where did you park it looks really tight there??
hey deadbeat libs pay your fines....
@Nuclear-XÂ Â I'll bet you don't even know what a Liberal is.
Liberalism (from the Latin liberalis) is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally they support ideas such as free and fair elections, civil rights, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free trade, and private property.
So if that's what it means to be Liberal...what are you?
most of portland is Liberals,elections prove this so,it would be obvious to even you,the majority offenders are libs.telling everyone else to pay our taxes ect but they cant pay thier parking tickets,go figure.
yeah the hopey,changey thing how that working out for the many unemployed?
The city needs to collect from the former (disgraced) Parking Czar who was feathering his own nest and ripping off the city by hiring his cronies. Let him pay the millions of dollars in parking tickets.Â
This is part of the city's budget, so I hope the city can collect.. But, I was given a parking ticket for parking in a handicap spot that was not marked, and a plant in front of the sign on the utility pole,, You have to pay the fine, then fight it.. How lame.. So they actually came after me and garnished my wages,,,, Never had that happen in my life.. Let's just say I have cost the city far more than they got from me.. I don't like losing !
@dougrpdx Parking in a handicap zone is different than a parking ticket. That is a vehicle code violation.Â
Why would anyone bother to pay parking tickets if nothing happens to you for not paying? But they keep tract of how much they would have if everyone paid. Does this make any sense to anyone? If they were really serious about collecting on them they could copy some of the laws in CA. Some things you can't do if your car has outstanding tickets is: transfer title, renew tags, get car out of impound. If you buy a car, go to transfer it to you and there are outstanding parking tickets on it you cannot do it until you pay. Doesn't matter that you didn't own the car at the time it got the tickets. I don't understand why Portland goes to the expense of giving parking tickets at all if they are not set up to collect on them.
@Just say'n If you work you pay.. What they are saying here is this is a city chock full of broke unemployed hipsters.. Sorry but it's true !
Its too boring to try and find people to pay parking tickets. They might have to hire someone who can actually do the job right. That is against government rules. Government is a bureaucracy. It is not supposed to run right.
A lot of cities use the boot pretty effectively. I think it was originally called the Columbus Boot, after the city that introduced it to collect from OSU students. The hassle of having to wait for someone to remove it after paying the fine discourages repeat offenders.It's especially funny when people think they can drive with it on the wheel and destroy their front end.
When I lived in Seattle a few decades ago, I couldn't renew my registration until I paid a $15 ticket that I wasn't even aware of. There is no reason why Portland can't do the same. Did the Parking Bureau replace its corrupt
employees with simply lazy ones?
eemployee
""That's a car I sold two years ago. Reported it to DMV, itâs not my car anymore,â Crabtree said. âThe other person didn't register it so they are in violation of that as well. They are scum bags.â"
The seller still has a responsibility to notify DMV if the ownership changes, because if not, if they are still listed as the legal owner, they still carry the responsibility for that vehicle.
"Each week the Multnomah County Circuit Court gives the city a list of hundreds of license plates for cars that could be towed for unpaid fines. But the city does not actively patrol for those cars and trucks."
Other cities actively patrol, and will boot or tow these cars, Portland should be no different.
So essentially the city is saying that we can ignore parking tickets. That is good to know. The city should not be allowed to enact the new, higher fines until they collect what is owed already.
I'll start throwing my tickets away now that I know I dont have to pay. good report!
@iamright555 lol I look forward to seeing you down there then. I'll be the dude driving off with your car.
So, a forgotten fix-it ticket gets my license suspended, which gives me a driving-while-suspended, which gets my car towed/impounded(eat ****, collectors), drove my insurance rates through the roof and caused countless headaches ... but, $10k in tickets and the city enforcers sit around and whack off. This city's stupidity never ceases to amaze me. It's no wonder that I have a minimal amount of respect for its laws and its management.
@JGalt A parking ticket is a lot different than a moving violation. Stupid actually does hurt sometimes apparently.
@Jeepers A moving violation is different than a parking violation. That's why I was hit with a $210.00 ticket for parking in an "invisible" spot. You're correct. Moving violations are different. They pay less in one fine than I did for a BOGUS parking ticket.Â
Say what you will, brainiac, I've been slowly making my money back. They shortly afterwards reversed that law, too.
It probably would have hurt more if I was one of these entitlement, PPS-educated "protestors". Instead, I pay what I have to in order to continue moving along. That doesn't prevent me from looking for ways to charge it back, you'd better believe that.
A parking ticket is a lot different from a moving violation, just as a body of water is much different from a piece of earth. Thanks for pointing that out. The fact is, though, that they are both charges issued by the city, charges which are suppose to be made due to their impact. Not that somebody as enlightened as yourself could figure that out, though.
You state, "stupid actually..". Well, you make a valid point for the numbness of ignorance.
It seems we forget the the City works for the people. Not he other way around. The city has no money, it has no assets. Everything belongs to the tax paying citizens. Even the streets and the parking spots. How did things get to where this beaureau somehow potures itself as an owner? All government bodies' focus is self-sustaining.
What good is it to fine everyone like crazy and not try diligently to collect the monies? Oh I have seen this before; it is called the Delbert Management style, throw a ton of crap on the wall and some of it will stick.
The people don't owe Portland anything!
Portland needs to get the cash so they can expand the day labour centre for illegals, rename streets to make illegals feel that this is not a foreign country to them, provide housing, medical care, education for them before legal citizens
I remember when I lived in Eugene (college) if I had unpaid parking tickets which I had many.....they booted my car and the only way I could get it unbooted was paying my parking tickets.Â
I thought Sammie Adams pardoned all scofflaws on his last day before leaving office.Â
In reality, this is just another example of a City that Doesn't Work. Portland loves to tout their big ideas but fails miserably in daily details of running a city. This is a management problem but no one is ever held accountable.
@I812Â Actually Portland does work. It's the City that Works (only) for the bike and communist crowd.Â
Even more reasons to stay away from that crap-hole of a city.
@Altazi It's kinda true. Downtown Portland looks like a village of wartime bunkers with it's brutal 70/80's architecture. They are so proud of that heinous 1972 Wells Fargo Building, so much they won't let any other building in the core be built taller. I've always found this incredibly hypocritical. For a city that is so focused on preventing sprawl, it will not even allow tall buildings to be constructed in its ... Downtown Core.Â
We appreciate you staying away.
@Kilgore Trout Isn't the classic East Side SMUG attitude. "We're so tolerant!" Until you disagree with our views.Â
Portland sounds like the Mafia...parking should be free.
@sortbait You've got to be joking, because the alternative is too painful.
So when my properly registered car was stolen and at the end of the ( 2) week of it being parked downtown was issued 4 parking tickets.
When the Portland Police officer called and said " you have 25Â minutes to get down here an claim your car or it gets towed""..
I raced down there and said " Thank you and also Why didn't some one run the plate to see if it was stolen or do they do that"??
Yes she said their supposed to in case it was used in a crime.
I had to mail the check for ALL the fines just to be given the chance to be heard.Â