Employees of D.C. government are accumulating thousands of dollars in parking tickets, and for many agencies, there is no system in place to track who they are.
That's what a new report says, written by Tommy Wells' Committee on Public Works and Transportation. The committee launched an investigation into the city's fleet of official vehicles in the wake of the scandal that surrounded the procurement of Council Chairman Kwame Brown's two fully-loaded Lincoln Navigators.
According to the investigation, one District agency, D.C. Public Schools, currently has 43 outstanding parking tickets on the books. Thirty-five of those tickets, totaling $3,475, cannot be pinned on any specific employee.
The report noted that vehicles registered to the Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration and the Department of Human Resources have racked up "dozens" of unpaid tickets.
The report says:
"Citations that do not qualify for administrative dismissal are to be transferred to the District employee who was operating the vehicle; the employee is then held responsible for the tickets they received. Responses to Committee questions demonstrated that such accountability is lacking. Many agency vehicles had citations that could not be assigned to a specific employee because it was not clear which employee was using the vehicle when the citation was issued."
In addition to concern about the parking tickets, the report documents a pervasive disregard for the District's rules regarding the use of SUV's. Only a select group of city personnel are allowed to be driving larger, less fuel efficient vehicles - those who perform emergency or public safety jobs. Exemptions are permitted, but the report revealed that much of the exemption process, as well as the city's vehicle procurement process, was not well documented.
Executives both in the Gray and Fenty administrations have used SUV's as their city-issued transportation, in violation of the law.
The report noted that much of the information regarding the fully-loaded Lincoln Navigatoronly came out as a result of media Freedom of Information Act requests. The committee says that greater transparency should be the norm going forward.
Also of note in the report was the use of city employees as chauffeurs. Only the mayor is permitted to have a city employee serve as a personal driver. Anyone else that wants to be driven by a city employee must have written authorization from an agency head, and those drivers must be reported to City Council on a quarterly basis.
The committee said that they had received "anecdotal reports" of city officials using government workers as chauffeurs. In a formal request from the committee, only one agency fessed up. The agency said that its director, Lisa Maria Mallory, had used a driver from January to February, but had discontinued the process.
The report concludes that the city's practices, during both the Fenty and Gray administrations, were in violation of the city's laws. "The letter of the law has not been followed in a number of cases as it relates to SUVs, fuel efficiency, authorized use, authorized drivers, and procuring vehicles with non-standard options."
Wells will present the report to City Council on Tuesday.
