Manhattan, NY – Government Top Violator on Parking

Manhattan, NY – Want to park free on the streets of Manhattan, without fear of having to pay tickets? Go to work for the federal government.

In fact, according to the House Transportation Committee, if you have a federal car, you do not have to confine yourself to the streets; you can even park on the sidewalks.
“Essentially, all of Lower Manhattan is a free parking lot for government vehicles,” said a report by the committee staff, which also found that the city’s Police Department and various city and state agencies are among the top parking-ticket scofflaws.

The habitual violators used to be United Nations consulates, whose drivers claimed diplomatic immunity. New York mostly solved that problem in 2002, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg persuaded the State Department to yank the plates of the worst violators. Consulates still owe about $18 million, according to Owen Stone, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Finance, but now they usually pay their tickets, or park legally, he said.

But the Department of State ran up $28,333 in tickets, according to data to be released today. Federal cars collected at least 669 tickets that went unpaid, according to the report, which lists the F.B.I. as the worst of the federal agencies, with $34,908.

Mr. Stone said the city had worked hard to collect money for tickets issued to federal cars, and by the beginning of this month had cut the total down to about $70,000, from $578,000 at the end of last year.

The Marine Corps, whose recruiters regularly park on the sidewalk at the recruiting booth in Times Square, had nearly $20,000 in unpaid tickets, the committee staff found. But the Police Department was the champion, running up $193,000 in unpaid tickets, they found.

Under federal rules, tickets accumulated on federal government cars must be paid by the driver and not by the agency that owns the cars. But the agencies say they cannot always track down who the driver was.

A spokeswoman for the F.B.I., Monica McLean, said that the agency follows government policy and makes drivers pay. She added, “Parking in New York City is a huge challenge. Parking facilities do not exist for the majority of F.B.I. vehicles assigned to the New York division.” A spokeswoman for the State Department had no comment.

Mr. Stone said that while foreign consulates are no longer incurring big numbers of tickets, they are still big debtors; Egypt is No. 1 with $1.9 million, and Kuwait second with $1.3 million.