A Fine Time

Last week St. Louis added another weapon to its scofflaw-catching arsenal: hand-held computers that allow the city's 24 parking officers to quickly print out a ticket. The computers, Baker explains, will let the officers know whether a vehicle belongs to someone with four or more unpaid tickets.

Despite all the new technology, problems persist. Fines are paid, but the information gets lost in the shuffle. Contested tickets are ignored, and collection threats are mailed to citizens like Heather Highland. Baker says erroneous payment notices constitute only 1 percent of the unpaid notices sent out. The culprit, he says, is the city-run Regional Justice Information Service (REJIS), the regional data-processing center that serves governmental agencies in the greater St. Louis area. One of REJIS' responsibilities is to reconcile the city courts' information with the treasury office's. When a person pays his or her parking fines, or contests tickets, that information is supposed to be forwarded to ACS.

"The information that was given to us via REJIS wasn't accurate," Baker claims.

Brett Peze, ACS' St. Louis project manager, says that in the initial stages of implementing the new system, a few data-transfer kinks appeared. "We did have some instances where we were not receiving information in a timely manner from the courts regarding dismissed tickets or tickets that were paid at court."

"When in doubt, blame the computers," laughs Paul Newhouse, general manager of REJIS. "Our role is peripheral these days," he adds. "But we suspect that the complaints are indeed valid."

Judge Margaret Walsh says many of the glitches have been corrected, adding: "It's not going to be the nightmare that it has been in the past."

But don't tell that to Heather Highland. "I'm still getting collection notices telling me I owe money. I just throw them away."