In the past three years, the man who controls parking in the City of St. Louis has forgiven eight of his own parking tickets.
Parking in the city is the domain of the Treasurer’s Office, an entity that oversees issuing parking tickets as well as operating some pay parking lots and garages around town. Treasurer Adam Layne has taken serious flak in recent weeks for letting some cars rack up thousands of dollars—in some cases tens of thousands of dollars—in unpaid parking tickets with seemingly no consequences. The Treasurer’s Office’s own data indicates that as much as $10.7 million is going uncollected. “The millions of dollars in uncollected parking fines represent a significant loss of revenue for the city,” Comptroller Donna Baringer previously told SLM.
Layne himself says nothing untoward is happening. Asked about the eight voided or adjudicated tickets, Layne tells SLM that he, like all elected officials in the city, has a hangtag that exempts him from paying meters or fees at city-owned lots…