So here's the letter I want to send to the governor & mayor. I've been cheesed off for a while about how they're trying to stitch together the budgets for which they're responsible from patches of parking fines, silly fees, and new & significantly increased penalties for all kinds of things. Your basic meter violation has doubled in price in the last couple of years, while the offensive nature of parking overtime has not appreciably changed. That's a clear attempt to cover a shortfall in the city's general budget, and I believe it's a dumb way to do the job. In particular, the penalties are onerous, because people often incur them because they could not afford to pay in the first place, so now they have to pay more, all so the official types don't have to risk an honest discussion of what everyone wants to spend and how much taxes will have to be to pay for that. Seems to me a crappy way to do the people's business, but I'm open to contradictory or contrasting opinions.

Note that the issue gained a higher priority because of my son's bonehead move that landed him in the penalty trap, but that's not really what I'm ranting about here. It's a story that illustrates a general point about how government structures its revenues.

August 4, 2009

Governor Bill Ritter

136 State Capitol

Denver, CO 80203

 

Mayor John Hickenlooper

City and County Building

1437 Bannock Street, Suite 350

Denver, CO 80202

 

Gentlemen,

 

Today, my son learned that the state has enacted a penalty for paying annual vehicle registration fees after expiration of the plates. He discovered this recent change when he finally scraped together funds to pay so he could provide evidence for parking tickets he had received from Denver for parking with expired plates. To his dismay, he was forced to pay more than twice what the plates would have cost when they expired in January, due to the brand new penalty.

 

Of course he and I both know that he needs to cover the cost of his car. He's been unemployed since last November after sustaining a back injury that would no longer allow him to continue doing his job, and unemployment insurance would not stretch to cover license plates, so he took his chances and lost the bet. Now that he's handed over the pound of flesh the state demanded, he has nothing left for Denver Parking's notoriously tough enforcers, or in fact for groceries.

 

Maybe you think that scenario is merely justice at work, but I would disagree. In these extraordinarily difficult economic times, it's easy even for people who want to fulfill their obligations to fall short. And when that happens, it seems they get caught in the official machinery for balancing the budget, where one completely legitimate fee is compounded by late penalties, then further larded by parking fines, other tickets from various agencies and jurisdictions, and who knows how many additional charges. I trust that neither of you would try to maintain that recent increases in vehicle registration, parking fines, penalties of all kinds, etc. are necessary responses to those specific functions and offenses. Surely we're all grownup enough to acknowledge that these increases are simply revenue measures to cover shortfalls in the general budgets.

 

I don't think of Colorado, and particularly of Denver, as places where we line up to kick someone who's down, but that's sure what has happened to my son. Already struggling up some of the steepest financial terrain in our state's history, he's now carrying the burden of what amounts to a Poor Tax, where inability to cover one expense exposes him to additional ones, all for the purpose of paying the government's unrelated bills.

 

That's a fairly dishonest, brutally regressive way to fund essential functions. Instead of honestly assessing costs and setting legitimate revenue streams to cover them, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, our officials are sneaking around the edges, taking the easy road of making ends meet by raising or tacking on unrelated fees and boosting fines and penalties for understandable and even inevitable lapses. These levies are almost guaranteed to fall on those least able to pay. Fairness aside, how smart is it to look for revenue increases from the people with the least resources?

 

You two men have put a lot of effort through TV commercials and other media to paint public portraits of yourselves as friendly, approachable, responsible public servants. I've never seen such a concerted PR effort. But the that image is badly tarnished by budget shenanigans that amount to nickel-and-diming those with only pennies to spend.

 

My son won't starve after paying the last few dollars of his unemployment check to help patch the hole in the state budget, I'll see to that. And he won't get any more tickets now that he's met his requirements. It's almost funny that he told me of the predicament only after he'd accumulated the tickets, because he wanted to take responsibility for his own costs. Too bad for both of us that I taught him that, I guess.

 

As you continue to work with difficult conditions of your own, dare we all hope that you'll find more responsible ways to do the people's business? The two of you need to man up and face the budget problems honestly, instead of shifting them in dribs and drabs onto those least able to help. You need to demand the same level of responsibility of the legislators and others with whom you work to develop policies worthy of our state's supposed concern for its citizens. At an absolute minimum, you need to include hardship exemptions that avoid compelling our state to keep grinding blood out of stones.

 

A tired citizen,

 

 

 

 

David W. Talley

 

 

Copies:

Paula Sandoval, State Senator, District 34

Jerry Frangas, State Representative, District 4

Rick Garcia, Denver District 1 Councilperson

Doug Linkhart, Councilperson at Large

Carol Boigon, Councilperson at Large