A big corruption scandal is brewing in the City of Los Angeles and congressional candidate Janice Hahn is involved over dismissed parking tickets.
The Los Angeles Times is reporting:
Despite claims by many top Los Angeles officials that they had never heard of a special service to review parking citations, newly released documents show several City Council offices benefited from the so-called Gold Card Desk by securing dozens of ticket dismissals.
Officials disbanded the Gold Card Desk in May amid public outrage that the city had a special unit that took care of parking citations.
Though some of the dismissals appeared to be routine and justified, many had little information on why the citations were canceled.
Terri McKinnon, an assistant to Councilwoman Janice Hahn, contacted the transportation department in August 2008 to have about 150 citations dismissed because of problems with new machines installed at a parking lot in her district, the records show. A Hahn spokesman said the citations were properly dismissed.
Really? Were any of the dismissed parking tickets those of Hahn's donors?
There's "no comprehensive policies or procedures in place to substantiate the dismissal of 43% of the 1,026 dismissed tickets" according to the controller's audit report. Any program that does not have documentation to justify a dismissal raises red flags that the program may have been abused and corrupted.
And the Contra Costa Times reports:
More than 40 percent of the parking citations dismissed by City Hall's controversial Gold Card Desk were dropped without explanation, according to a final audit of the program released Thursday.
A review of the tickets, issued from 2008-2010, show that 75 percent of the requests for dismissal came from the Department of Transportation, and the rest came from City Council and other city offices.
In August 2008, for instance, DOT interim General Manager Amir Sedadi asked that 150 tickets be dismissed because of a glitch in a parking kiosk in San Pedro. The tickets apparently weren't dismissed quickly enough, prompting follow-up emails from City Councilwoman Janice Hahn's office.
City officials have some explaining to do, especially Councilwoman Janice Hahn, since she is running for congress in a July 12 special election in the 36th Congressional District. This news could not have come at a worse time for the Hahn campaign since the special election is 12 days away.
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