I’m back in the blogging saddle and thinking about Philadelphia and its parking woes…Read about it here.
It seems the state of PA took over the parking authority in 2001, basically because of mismanagement. Now the city is threatening to sue the state for, guess what, mismanaging its parking operation.
Now lets see — when the parking operation was under the control of the city, it had 500 employees — anyone want to guess how many there are now? 1,000. Yep, double the number. The city is accusing the state of patronage. (They doubled the size of the board, with each house of the state legislature picking board members.) Well Duh — that’s what politics does, isn’t it.
The police write the tickets, the authority collects the money. They are complaining that the numbers are down because the police aren’t writing enough tickets. Lets see, the cops have a choice, catch a rapist, or write a ticket. They have a parking enforcement division, but they aren’t talking.
I wonder what would happen if the authority had a board of minimally paid members of the community and the authority to write tickets. What if this board hired an executive director with experience? What if the board told the director that his salary was directly related to collections and profit (get the money in and reduce expenses.)
Nope — wouldn’t work — no politics.
JVH
