Facing severe financial woes, New York is pursuing deadbeats who have long seemed to thumb their noses at the city with impunity, the hundreds of thousands of scofflaws who have accumulated a total of nearly $700 million in overdue parking fines.
In the world of the city’s parking wars, their defiance has been something of a long-standing joke: drivers with a stash of tickets stuffed in their glove compartments.
Payback time, the city says, has arrived.
Using a variety of bludgeons in its arsenal and enlisting collection agencies, the city is more aggressively tracking down scofflaws to seize their cars or other assets. With a budget gap of $3.3 billion to close, city officials say every dollar owed New York matters.
Full story: New York City cracks down on parking scofflaws