BALTIMORE (WBFF) — City leaders faced sharp questions at City Hall during a budget hearing for the city’s Finance Department as council members demanded action to collect millions of dollars in unpaid fines, fees and invoices.
“It is extremely important that every dollar is collected,” Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen said. “It is imperative we develop systems to fix our internal controls, so every source of revenue is able to be collected by the city.”
ALSO READ | Residents question why Baltimore City is sitting on $323M in unpaid parking, moving fines
The calls for stronger collection efforts followed an audit released two weeks ago which found the department had failed to collect more than $4 million in invoices. Department leaders also acknowledged they were unsure how much additional revenue the city had not collected.
During the hearing, Cohen asked, “Director have you been able to identify the amount owed to the city during the current audit?”
The response given was: “The outstanding amount is near $14 million.”
The Finance Department also struggled to explain its failure to collect millions in parking fines and traffic violations. Residents in Federal Hill recently totaled more than $323 million in fines and penalties, which they complain, the city has failed to collect.
At City Hall, administrators acknowledged enforcement has long been relaxed, especially for out-of-state violators, and that if they failed to pay, the city did not pursue them.
“The individual out of state would only get two notices. The ticket and the follow up. Now we’re doing a follow up for six full months,” a representative at the city’s Finance Department said.
We are beefing up to be more aggressive,” City Administrator Faith Leach insisted.
City leaders said the city has hired a new collection agency that will aggressively pursue violators who fail to pay, but some residents questioned that approach.
“Why should they hire a collection agency, don’t they have staff?” Federal Hill resident Sandy Seward asked.
There was deflection, finger-pointing and making excuses,” Stephen Topping, of Federal Hill, said.
Residents in Federal Hill spent weeks uncovering the $323 million in uncollected traffic violations and said they received few assurances during the hearing that the city would ever recover the money.
“Our mayor controller and city council should, at the very least, say we are investigating this and get back to the citizens and have a time frame on it and be professional,” Seward said.
“We the taxpayer will lose because we’ll get increased fees and taxes if they ignore these huge amounts of revenue,” Topping said.
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