Title
September 11, 2011
To The President and Members of
The Council of the City of Philadelphia:
For the following reasons, I am returning herewith to your Honorable Body as disapproved Bill No. 120489, which was passed by Council at its session on June 21, 2011.
Bill No. 120489 would impose a four dollar surcharge on all parking tickets. It would direct that half of the revenue from the surcharge be used by the City for maintenance of recreation facilities and half be directed to the Philadelphia Parking Authority for taxicab regulation.
The City Solicitor has provided an opinion advising that although Council has clear authority to set the level of fines for parking violations, including the level of any "surcharges," state law and the City Charter govern the manner in which the revenue generated from those fines and surcharges is distributed. The opinion explains that there are two separate reasons - one based in state law, the other based in the Home Rule Charter - that the bill's provisions governing the distribution of revenue from the surcharge are invalid. A copy of the Solicitor's Opinion, which sets forth a detailed analysis of the issues, is attached for your reference.
In summary, the opinion states that the bill violates state law because state law provides a very clear formula for the distribution of revenue generated by the City's on-street parking system (which comes largely from metered parking and parking enforcement fines). This basic formula was recently readopted by the General Assembly in HB 254, which was signed into law by the Governor as Act 84 on July 2, 2012. Under that formula, the City receives a base amount; amounts above the base amount must be transferred directly to the School District of Philadelphia. In recent years, parking revenues have exceeded the base amount by several million dollars per year. Therefore, any additional revenue that flows from the system of on-street parking regulation must b...
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