Broken Meter Tickets In Los Angeles Could Be Banned Under Proposed Calif. Law

By Dennis Romero Tue., Jan. 8 2013 at 9:08 AM

Lucy Rendler-Kaplan

In some ways Los Angeles is becoming New York in the 1970s, a city of crumbling streets with a bully of a City Hall that could care less about constituents or justice.

Pot holes crack your wheels and eat your tires, traffic cops are quick to give fund-raising tickets, and parking citations are just part of the high price of living here.

But state Assemblyman Mike Gatto plans to right at least one wrong in the mean metropolis:

Gatto this week introduced legislation that will prohibit L.A. City Hall from doing what it does -- namely ticketing you for parking in a spot with a broken meter.

You see, last year the state legislature tried to do the right thing by outlawing the practice.

But it left the door open for cities that were addicted to the funds broken-meter tickets raise. All municipalities had to do was pass specific laws allowing the ticketing to continue. L.A. did just that, of course.

City Hall has rarely met a ticket or fee it didn't like.

Gatto, an assemblyman from L.A.'s northeast communities, wants to shut that door again. His legislation would prohibit cities from ticketing folks who park at broken meters for the maximum time that would have been allowed had the meter been good.

According to a statement from his office:

Gatto's bill would close this loophole and protect individuals from cities and counties that are overzealous in their parking enforcement.

The assemblyman:

It's just wrong for cities to ticket people who want to park at a meter that the city has failed to fix. Or to force a motorist to drive around or park in a paid lot when a perfectly good spot on the street is available.

Godspeed, Gatto.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

Tags:

City Council, Mike Gatto, parking meters, tickets

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SanDiegoAttorney

This is true. Thanks for the insight. Broken parking meters should be removed or fixed. Are there any actions taken about this?

90041eaglerock

Gatto's action may be largely a waste of time, provided the information
provided at the City Council meeting was accurate- and that's always something
calling for caution in accepting.

.
The council meeting brought forth the information that all parking meters
will be of the same updated style that reports its own malfunctions. The
spokesperson for the dept. handling the parking meters said that repairs to
broken meters will be done in a matter of a few hours. Also mentioned was the
number of meters then out of service- I recall is answer for that moment was
"none" or another very small number.

.
Electronic notification will leave motorists with few broken meters
compared to the old standard of coin-only operations. Few motorists will
benefit from Gatto's law - maybe motorists in other cities using older meters
would benefit enough to make it worth the work.

.
Gatto's said this is to eliminate the "loophole" in the law. "Loophole"
usually means an unintended way to evade what's been presented. In this
law, the "opt out" effect is clearly stated so there's no surprise in seeing
L.A. use that provision, and with L.A., there's usually not much cleverly
applied; you can see the current fiscal condition of the city as an area barren
of any clever actions beneficial to the city's people and busninesses.