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#City Hall admits new budget dismantles unit for placard crackdown

#City Hall admits new budget dismantles unit for placard crackdown

July 3, 2020 | 7:06pm | Updated July 3, 2020 | 7:49pm

City Hall has pulled the plug on its latest effort to tackle rampant placard abuse by municipal employees, shutting down the NYPD unit meant to enforce the most recent crackdown.

Officials said Friday they are axing all 116 positions that were dedicated to placard enforcement through attrition and zeroing out the unit’s $5.4 million annual budget — just a little more than a year after Mayor Bill de Blasio rolled out the effort to great fanfare.

“A dedicated unit is no longer needed because we are enhancing enforcement coverage by introducing new technology and other advancements that allow any TEA to do this work more seamlessly,” said City Hall spokeswoman Laura Feyer, explaining away the budget cuts.

The cuts are projected to remain in effect for at least the next four years — effectively permanently disbanding the effort.

The de Blasio administration also admitted in response to questions submitted early Friday that officials had yanked just five placards from city employees under de Blasio’s three-strike policy for placard abuse, which was another highly touted policy announced in City Hall’s February 2019 crackdown.

Warning letters are supposed to go out to another 389 city employees this week, Feyer said. That’s just a tiny fraction of the more than 125,000 parking placards in circulation in New York City.

Placards are only supposed to be used to help on-duty employees of city and state agencies to work more efficiently by allowing them to briefly park in places where most other drivers are barred from leaving their cars.

But the system has been abused for years with city employees turning sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, bus lanes, and no-standing zones into permanent parking for their cars.

Placards sat at the center of the pay-to-play charges against de Blasio donors Jeremy Reich­berg and Jona Rechnitz — one of the biggest corruption scandals at the NYPD and City Hall in recent years — and have so infuriated New Yorkers there is even a Twitter account dedicated to exposing misuse.

Officials have for years responded to abuse complaints with promises they will finally get serious about the problem.

That happened once more in February 2019, when City Hall announced its then-latest crackdown and highlighted the creation of the new unit, which would be “dedicated to targeted enforcement of placard rules.”

“This dedicated team will focus on particular hot spots in Lower Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn, the two areas most plagued by placard abuse,” it added in the press release.

But like every other crackdown, this one ended 17 months later — with a return to privileges as usual.

Source

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