Unpaid Fines: New York City Owed Over $2 Billion
Have you ever received a parking ticket and paid it off right away? Turns out, many New Yorkers are not paying their fines and the city is owed over $2 billion in unpaid fines. City Council member Gale Brewer requested data from the independent budget office and is questioning why these fines have not been collected.
NEW YORK – According to a new report by New York City's Independent Budget Office, the city is owed over $1B in unpaid parking tickets and speeding fines.
The Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that provides information about the city's budget and tax revenues, made the announcement in a letter to Upper West Side Councilmember Gale Brewer, who had requested the information.
According to the IBO, the city is owed over $1B in parking and camera-generated fines, along with $150M in alienable property charges and roughly another $940M in penalties adjudicated by the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings.
An NYPD Traffic officer places a parking ticket on a car’s windshield near a retail space for lease sign in the West Village as the city continues Phase 4 of re-opening following restrictions imposed to slow the spread of coronavirus on August 19, 20 Expand
"These three measures are by no means exhaustive, and are likely an undercount of the total amount of debt that the city is owed," the IBO said in a statement.
According to the IBO, over $5.8B in fines have been given out since 2017, with $4.78 having been repaid as of March 2023.