City Hall has pulled the plug on the latest attempt to tackle the misuse of placards that are rampant by city employees, shutting down NYPD units intended to enforce the latest crackdown.
Officials said on Friday that they had cut all 116 positions dedicated to enforcing placards through reductions and negating the unit’s annual budget of $ 5.4 million – just over a year after Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a festive effort.
“A special unit is no longer needed because we are increasing the scope of law enforcement by introducing new technology and other advancements that enable TEA to do this work more smoothly,” said City Hall spokeswoman Laura Feyer, explaining budget cuts.
The cuts are projected to remain in force for at least the next four years – effectively dissolving the effort permanently.
The de Blasio administration also acknowledged in response to a question posed Friday morning that officials had withdrawn only five placards from city employees under the de Blasio’s three blows policy for misuse of placards, which was a highly praised policy announced at the City Hall crackdown in February 2019.
A warning letter should have been sent to 389 other city employees this week, Feyer said. That’s only a fraction of the more than 125,000 parking placards circulating in New York City.
Plaques are only used to help city office and office staff work more efficiently by allowing them to park briefly in places where most other drivers are prohibited from leaving their cars.
But this system has been misused for years with city employees turning sidewalks, road crossings, bicycle lanes, bus lanes, and restricted zones into permanent parking lots for their cars.
The placard perched amid charges of paying to play against de Blasio donors Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz – one of the biggest corruption scandals in the NYPD and City Hall in recent years – and has made New Yorkers so infuriated. even inspire Twitter accounts dedicated to exposing the misuse of placards.
Officials have for years responded to the persecution with a promise they will finally be serious about this issue.
That happened once again in February 2019, when City Hall announced the latest crackdown and highlighted the formation of a new unit, which would “be dedicated to the enforcement of targeted placard rules.”
“This dedicated team will focus on special hot spots in Lower Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn, two areas that are most disturbed by placard abuse,” he added in a press release.
But like every other crackdown, this one ended 17 months later – by returning to the usual privileges.
