D.A.: Dormont Ticket Procedure Needed

UPDATES with comment from mayor.

should develop a procedure for dismissing certain parking tickets to alleviate concerns of ticket fixing, according to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office.

The office has not, as Mayor Tom Lloyd said in a recent email, indicated that certain people have the right to dismiss tickets, spokesman Mike Manko said Wednesday.

Lloyd wrote in an email Friday to various borough employees that he and the president of the state mayor’s association had met with D.A. Stephen Zappala who “supported the mayor’s right to dismiss tickets and also to have some designees.”

Lloyd continued, in capitals: “We will continue to follow the practice we have been using for the past number of years.”

But Manko disputed the mayor’s assertion.

“Contrary to what is being circulated in various emails, we have not told anyone that certain people have the right to dismiss tickets,” he said in an email.

Lloyd said, "It sounds like I misinterpreted what he said when I was there. But that’s not a big deal."

The takeaway, he said, was that Zappala seemed to support his position that he can dismiss tickets, but going a step further with saying a policy is needed.

“The borough should enact an ordinance or an administrative procedure spelling out who has the right to dismiss tickets … and failure to do so will continue to lead people to believe that tickets are being ‘fixed’ by certain borough officials,” Manko wrote.

Lloyd has denied suggestions that he's fixed tickets for votes.

Acting chief Richard Dwyer said he was glad the matter had been cleared up and it will be up to council to address.

Rizza said he would ask council to develop a policy on who can dismiss parking tickets and for what reasons.

As an example of an allowable reason, if a new renter moves in and isn't aware of permit parking and gets a ticket, they should be able to buy a permit and have that ticket dismissed, he said.

"The big thing about it is the accountability," Rizza said. "The amount of tickets they are dismissing is just way out of control."

Rizza has said he had no idea just how many tickets were being dismissed until he began looking at budget numbers. Since 2010, more than $30,000 worth of tickets have been dismissed, but there's no way of determining why. In 2010, 15 percent of tickets issued were dismissed.

Besides Lloyd, the desk officers in the police station had been dismissing them. Rizza directed them to stop doing so on Friday.

While Lloyd said a policy would be good, he was skeptical that the council could get one done before the year's end.