BALTIMORE (WBFF) — As Baltimore faces a projected $64 million budget deficit, residents and city leaders are raising questions about money the city could be collecting, but isn’t — including hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid parking and moving-violation tickets.
Some residents in south Baltimore said they were hardly surprised when a city audit discovered more than $4 million in uncollected revenue, and they said their own review suggests the total is far higher.
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Residents in Federal Hill said they had complained for years about traffic violators “wrecking the community,” but they said a crash at the entrance of Federal Hill Park three years ago made the issue impossible to ignore.
“A car came up here going 50 mph, hit that island and took out a tree,” one resident said. “That’s when I said, this is crazy. This is crazy.”
After that, residents said they began counting cars, tracking the outcome of city citations and using public records found on the city’s Open Baltimore website. They said their research showed “a large number of accounts, over 100,000 that had unpaid parking fines in Baltimore City.”
When they computed city citations for both parking and moving violations — some dating back to 2011 — residents said they found more than $142 million in tickets that have gone unpaid. They said that when unpaid penalties were added to those fines, the total grew to $288 million in revenue they believe the city has failed to collect.
“Supposedly, we’re in debt and it’s a lot of money that should be collected,” Sandra Seward, a city resident, said.
At a Board of Estimates meeting, the mayor criticized the amount of money left uncollected, saying, “There is no way in hell we should have this amount of money just standing out there.”
On Wednesday, city leaders condemned the city’s finance department for failing to collect millions more in unpaid invoices that were discovered in a recent audit.
City Council President Zeke Cohen said, “If a resident doesn’t pay BGE I know BGE will collect. We should be similarly ruthless.”
The mayor also pointed to enforcement practices for other types of violations, saying, “They get a red light camera ticket and they miss the deadline, they get the notice quickly that costs are going up. We have to have the same vigor for these types of things.”
But, residents said city leaders did not mention that millions of traffic tickets may also have gone uncollected.
One resident, identified as Topping, said, “That number pales in comparison to what we found.”
Topping added, “If these council people are worried about $4 million, it’s laughable when you have hundreds of millions of dollars regarding parking fines.”
Residents said they have tried to present their findings to city officials, but have been unable to get meetings to happen.
“Three meetings were scheduled. Three meetings were canceled,” one resident said.
They said the amount of uncollected fines continues to grow, and they questioned why the city is not moving more aggressively to collect what they calculate as $288 million.
“We have citywide issues regarding finances and we’re not getting support from the people hired to do the job,” Seward said.
The city was contacted late Thursday for an explanation and had not responded.
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