New Finance Dept. Service Lets You Fight Violations Online

Now you can fight a parking ticket from your laptop. A new function on the city website lets you dispute parking violations – and health and sanitation tickets – by submitting pictures and paperwork online in your defense.

“It means that you won’t have to zip out of work to contest a parking ticket on your lunch hour,” Mayor Bloomberg said Monday as he unveiled the new feature. “You won’t have to spend time on weekends making photocopies and stapling documents to dispute your ticket by mail.”

The new feature on nyc.gov/finance lets you upload digital photos and documents as supporting evidence for fighting tickets.

Administrative law judges can ask questions about your case and issue decisions by email.

The program sounded good to New Yorkers disputing their tickets at the Finance Department’s downtown office, who said haggling in person was a waste of their time.

“I never beat a ticket in my life. I guess it’s better to do it online since they don’t see it in my face anyway,” said James Sligh, 48, of Spanish Harlem.

David DeJesus, 34, of the lower East Side, said: “The judges have a lot of attitude. Some of them don’t even want to look at your photos. If you put them online there’s no way of denying it.”

The Finance Department previously allowed people to fight tickets by mail or by typing a defense on its website, but had no way to accept pictures or other paperwork online.

Brandon Boyd of Harlem wasn’t so sure. “I don’t know if I would trust it,” he said. “Some of the tickets today are ridiculous. At least with the judge you’re face to face.”

New Yorkers fight about 1.2 million of the 10 million parking tickets written each year in the city, and 48% of challenged tickets get dismissed, Finance Commissioner David Frankel said.

He wouldn’t venture a guess whether more people will fight their tickets now that it’s easier – but said there’s no difference in how people are treated whether they fight their tickets in person or by mail.

At a City Council hearing later, Frankel said Finance was considering whether to do away with a program that offers New Yorkers a reduced fine for parking tickets in exchange for dropping their challenges and paying up.

Yet he defended a similar settlement program that gives a break to companies with fleets of large vehicles in exchange for not fighting every ticket.

“If we didn’t do that, New York City would not function,” Frankel said. “When the FedEx man wants to make a delivery, if he’s going to get a ticket every single time he does that, that service would simply cease to function in this city.”

That angered Brooklyn Councilmen Domenic Recchia and David Greenfield, who said cash-strapped New Yorkers need a break more than big companies.

“Why is it equitable for a corporation to get a break but not for an individual to get a break?” asked Greenfield. “This is just another example of the city enacting a policy that slams the little guy.”