Drop in parking tickets leads to widening city deficit
Los Angeles gives out close to 2 million parking tickets each year. But for the city, it’s not nearly enough.
In the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2024, the city collected $110 million in parking fines, according to the city controller’s Revenue Forecast Report. The costs for salaries, equipment, processing and other expenses in the parking enforcement division totaled $88 million that year. Add in the pension obligations and other liabilities, and the total jumps to more than $176 million, according to the city’s annual budget reports.
Parking fines were once a reliable source of revenue for the city. But that ended in 2016. Since then, Los Angeles’s parking enforcement program has produced a widening hole in the city’s finances, racking up $374 million more in total costs than it has brought in from fines. The gap—estimated at more than $65 million for the current fiscal year—is one slice of a growing budget deficit the city is desperately trying to close.
In his revenue forecast this month, City Controller Kenneth Mejia cited declining parking revenue as among the factors contributing to what he estimates will be a $140 million revenue shortfall in Los Angeles’s budget for the current fiscal year.
A web of issues
Clawing back lost ground won’t be easy. Last year, the city issued just over 1.86 million parking tickets, roughly 21% fewer than in 2016—the last year that revenue from parking fines exceeded the cost to enforce them. Meanwhile, the total cost of parking enforcement during that period has increased 40%, according to city budgets.
Colin Sweeney, the public information director for the city’s Department of Transportation, said vacancies and cuts in staffing have contributed to the decline in citations. A growing list of responsibilities for traffic officers have only deepened the problem, he told Crosstown.
Though declining revenues and rising costs predate the pandemic, COVID-19 exacerbated the problem. Ticket revenue took a major hit in 2020 when the city suspended many parking regulations. Revenue in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2021, fell to $93.35 million, a 37% drop from just five years prior, according to city budget figures.
Four years later, the division still hasn’t rebounded to its pre-pandemic revenue. Ironically, the city’s budget shortfall stands to make the problem worse. Sweeney said the city eliminated 63 vacant positions in parking enforcement services when it finalized the 2024-25 budget to save money. That means fewer officers on the street writing tickets.
Staffing isn’t the only issue. In 2020, with many parking restrictions temporarily lifted, officers shifted from writing tickets to focusing more on other responsibilities that didn’t generate revenue, including supporting COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites.
Officers manage traffic flows at large events and support police and fire department investigations. Currently, many officers also assist the Inside Safe program, Mayor Karen Bass’ initiative to address the city’s homelessness crisis. These responsibilities now collectively make up half their workload, Sweeney said, leaving them less time to issue tickets.
Last February, Bass directed the city to engage in “prioritized critical hiring,” a cost-cutting measure that severely limited the addition of new staff. Sweeney said the directive will make it more difficult to hire new traffic officers.
Runaway costs widen the gap
The costs of running the city’s parking enforcement program are significantly higher than they were just a few years ago. Meanwhile, revenue from fines has fallen significantly from pre-COVID levels. This has resulted in stubborn deficits that the city is unlikely to shrink any time soon.
The 2024 fiscal year deficit exceeded $66 million, the largest on record. The deficit forecast for the 2025 fiscal year is more than $65 million.
Ongoing staffing shortages are likely to exacerbate the problem.
Since the city adopted its most recent budget last spring, 49 additional traffic officers have either retired or moved to different positions, Sweeney said. He noted that the department is asking the city to hire more officers in the next budget, which will be presented to the city council on April 21.
How we did it: We examined the costs and revenues of the city’s parking enforcement division in budget documents over the past eight years. We also analyzed data on total parking tickets issued for the same period.
Have questions about our data? Or want to know more? Write to us at askus@xtown.la.
