Ohio AG’s office pursuing 20-year-old parking tickets
CLEVELAND — In a push to bring money into government coffers, Cleveland and the Ohio Attorney General’s office violated an agreement to collect unpaid parking tickets.
Thousands of people who had been ticketed for parking illegally in Cleveland as long ago as the year 2000 recently received notices from the attorney general’s office, which the city has contracted to collect on unpaid parking debts.
A 2021 memorandum of understanding between the city and the Ohio Attorney General’s office says they are only supposed to collect on debts where the principal exceeds $100.
However, according to a cleveland.com analysis of the parking ticket data, 98.4% of the 100,000 tickets in question are for less than $100. More than half of them were only $20 tickets when they were issued, according to the data. Only three of them were for more than $100 when they were originally issued.
Cleveland Clerk of Courts spokesman Obie Shelton didn’t dispute that the attempts to collect on debts under $100 violated the agreement. He said the threshold was “overlooked during a leadership transition” at the court’s parking division.
While state and local law allows repercussions for unpaid parking tickets, and there is no statute of limitations on those infractions, it is unclear what steps Cleveland officials will take to enforce what amounts to mostly $20 parking tickets from around 20 years ago.
That batch of 100,000 tickets, spanning from 20002005, are worth a total of $3.6 million, $1 million of which are additional fees, between $10 and $60.
But only $175,510 (including fees) were for tickets that exceed $100, according to city data.
Penalties for nearly all parking violations in Cleveland range from $25 to $50, according to city code. However, two types of tickets that meet or exceed that threshold are a $100 ticket for illegally parked trucks or commercial vehicles and $250 for illegally parking in a handicapped space.
After cleveland.com pointed out the $100 threshold in the agreement, Shelton said it’s unclear whether the city would continue to pursue collection of parking tickets from 2000-2005 that are less than $100.
Shelton said the court chose that limited timeframe to make a final push to get those debts paid before the city determines the tickets are too old to pursue. The clerk of courts has already written off unpaid tickets issued in 1999 or earlier, Shelton said.
The clerk of courts is trying to collect those tickets, in part, because City Council often pressures the clerk to more aggressively collect unpaid tickets, Shelton said.
Many people simply refuse to pay their parking tickets, Shelton said. For the first year after a ticket is issued, the payment compliance rate is usually around 50%, he said. When people receive reminders they’re more likely to pay.
“On behalf of the people who have paid their tickets, we have an obligation” to seek payment for unpaid tickets, Shelton said.
However, many holdouts will finally pay the fines when it affects their ability to use their vehicle, Shelton said.
For example, people who have illegally parked in a handicap zone or who have three-plus parking tickets are unable to renew their vehicle registration without paying first, according to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.
Those with five or more tickets from Cleveland could be towed, and if they are, they are required to pay off all tickets plus the tow fee to get their car back, according to the clerk of courts.
Though the collection efforts appear to violate the city and Ohio Attorney General’s memorandum of understanding, mounting a legal fight against the fees is likely futile, said Cathy Lesser Mansfield, a senior instructor in law at Case Western Reserve University.
Since the tickets are based on judgments issued, they are treated as debts, not as criminal or civil matters. Plus, the contract in question is between two government agencies, so a citizen would have no standing to sue Cleveland or the attorney general’s office with an argument that they violated the agreement, Mansfield said.
“This just strikes everyone as wrong because it was so long ago,” Mansfield said. “But also, if you get a ticket, if you don’t think you deserve a ticket, you’re supposed to request a hearing and show up for the hearing.”
The agreement
The Ohio Attorney General has had a program to collect debts on behalf of local governments since 2012, following a change in state law allowing the practice.
The program was created, at least in part, to help local governments, still reeling from the Great Recession, collect unpaid court fines, according to an archived news release from then-Attorney General Mike DeWine.
When announcing the program, DeWine said the attorney general’s office could withhold lottery winnings or tax returns of those who owe money.
The Ohio Attorney General charges a 10% collection fee that is then passed along to the consumer, according to a 2012 brochure advertising the program. That brochure also promised the process would be “fully automated.”
In July 2021, Cleveland officials signed the memorandum of understanding with the attorney general’s office to collect unpaid parking tickets.
That agreement was codified shortly after City Council had approved legislation setting aside up to $300,000 for the clerk to hire a company or group to collect unpaid parking tickets. The attorney general does not charge municipalities to collect debts. Instead, the office assesses a 10% fee on top of the original fines that are charged to the debtor. Because the agreement with the attorney general’s office did not require additional city expense, city council did not need to approve the agreement.
During a 2021 City Council committee meeting, where court officials sought legislation to renew their parking ticket collections, court officials did not specify the years from which they would pursue unpaid tickets, nor did they mention the dollar amount of the unpaid tickets.
However, the clerk of court’s previous contractor for collecting unpaid parking tickets was typically paid $60,000 per month, Curtis Wilson, a deputy clerk, said during the 2021 meeting. Even after those fees, which decreased during COVID19, the city’s general fund was still raking in $200,000 to $400,000 per month in ticket revenue, Wilson said at the 2021 meeting.
As for the attorney general’s office, it is just in charge of collecting on the debt, not disputing it, said Hannah Hundley, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Attorney General’s office. It’s also up to the city to determine whether it will take action against those who haven’t paid.
“If a debtor challenges the debt, they are referred back to Cleveland Municipal Court to challenge the citation or certification. We don’t defend the validity of the underlying debt. All we do is let people know it’s been certified to us and try to collect it,” Hundley said in an email.
While the agreement makes clear it is the city’s responsibility to ensure its list of debts are valid, the agreement also gives the attorney general’s office “the right to decline acceptance of accounts based on quantity, value or debt type,” according to the memorandum of understanding.