By Frank Main and Fran Spielman
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — A City Hall memo obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times warns police officials that the city will “witness a dramatic decrease in annual revenues and not meet 2010 targets” if a slump in writing parking and vehicle-compliance tickets continues until the end of the year.
The Aug. 10 memo, which doesn’t explicitly ask police to boost tickets, tells district commanders and other supervisors that police ticket-writing dropped nearly 25 percent in July compared to the same month in 2009. It lists the five districts with the least and most tickets.
Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Donahue called the memo a “troubling warning that smacks of ticketing quotas. It sends the wrong message to the public as to what the real responsibilities of police officers are.”
But Revenue Department spokesman Ed Walsh said his department has “no role regarding the Police Department’s deployment or determination of duties for police officers.” In 2009, the Police Department asked the Revenue Department to send it weekly reports about tickets and other data, he said.
“This is nothing new,” Walsh said.
A top police official, speaking anonymously, said the department doesn’t instruct officers to write additional tickets based on city budget concerns. District lieutenants and sergeants said they don’t know of any directives to write more tickets.
The memo said the department issued about 850,000 tickets in July 2009 and only about 642,000 this July.
Last month, officers in the Near North District, which covers the downtown area north of the Chicago River, issued 6,709 tickets, the most in the city. The Wentworth District east of Sox Park on the South Side issued 1,030 tickets, the fewest.
The districts with the most tickets were among those with the least crime in the city. And the districts with the fewest tickets were among those with the most crime.
The memo also said the percentage of “spoiled” tickets dropped from 4.25 percent in 2009 to 4 percent in 2010. Tickets are spoiled -- or invalidated -- when the information on the ticket is wrong. That can mean anything from an incorrect address to the wrong make or model of a vehicle.
Serco Inc., a firm hired by the city’s parking-meter contractor, Chicago Parking Meters LLC, also writes parking tickets. Serco stepped up its ticket writing in late June and early July.
Aides assigned to the Revenue Department write parking tickets, too.
The Revenue Department warning about lagging ticket-writing comes at a time when the city is scrounging for every available dollar to erase a record $654.7 million budget shortfall. Earlier this month, Fitch Ratings downgraded Chicago’s bond rating, citing the worst shortfall in the city’s history and Mayor Daley’s “accelerated use of reserves to balance operations.” Daley said he expected the move.
“Every city, county and state is going down all over the country because there’s no revenue coming in. That’s the problem,” the mayor said.
Copyright 2010 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.