Council Member Justin Brannan wants to give the city the power to charge rich people more for civil infractions like illegal parking, he said Thursday.
It's an interesting idea. Automated enforcement, for all its proven benefits, does little to stop drivers for whom a $50 speeding ticket is a drop in the financial bucket. The same goes for parking tickets. Brannan's new bill doesn't specify which civil violations should be meted out based on income, but he told the Daily News he thought parking should be top of the list.
"Fines should be high enough to discourage people from breaking laws that endanger or inconvenience our neighbors but low enough that they don’t arbitrarily upend anyone’s life,” said Brannan (D-Bay Ridge).
“Why should the guy who double parked his 1988 Toyota pay the same as the guy with the 2024 Bentley?”
Of course, the guy with the 2024 Bentley could easily be worth several billion dollars — it's unclear how high the fine would have to be to prevent someone that rich from illegally parking.
David was Streetsblog's do-it-all New York City beat reporter from 2015 to 2019. He returned as deputy editor in 2023 after a three-year stint at the New York Post.
The mayor's reported pick to run the city Law Department is former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani and notorious foe of bike lanes and congestion pricing.