Confusion, miscommunication led to Seattle canceling 200,000 parking tickets

SEATTLE – As Seattle’s parking enforcement officers were preparing to move from the Seattle Police Department to the Seattle Department of Transportation last fall, officer Nathan Morrow remembered feeling concerned that he would soon be writing illegal tickets.

Before the transition, Morrow said in a recent hearing before the Washington state Public Employment Relations Commission, enforcement officers had the authority to do their jobs, as laid out by the city charter, as SPD employees through permission from the chief. “And we were no longer going to be part of the police department,” he said.

As it turned out, Morrow’s concerns were justified. In May, Seattle canceled more than 200,000 parking tickets, concluding that, for seven months, parking enforcement officers didn’t have the authority to write them. The city has promised refunds of over $5 million in paid tickets and nullified another $5 million in unpaid tickets.

The expensive screw-up, which comes as Seattle faces a $117 million budget deficit, was the result of a number of breakdowns, including legal uncertainty, siloed departments and a transition from one department to the other that dragged out for months, according to emails obtained through public records requests, transcripts and exhibits from an ongoing labor dispute, and a letter sent Thursday from the mayor’s office to the Seattle City Council.

Central to the mishap was the issuance of so-called “special commissions” – certifications written by the chief of police authorizing non-police workers to perform enforcement actions. Not until April, seven months after parking enforcement left SPD, were the special commissions provided.

In a letter to the Seattle City Council, sent Thursday and obtained by the Seattle Times, Mayor Bruce Harrell blamed a lack of coordination, “conflicting legal interpretations surrounding a recently passed state law regarding background checks for commissions, a failure of collaboration between departments, and the absence of an assigned project manager with authority to direct and coordinate departments engaged in the transfer.”

Legal confusion

The first breakdown was related to disagreement over how to interpret new state legislation regulating certifications of police. A new law, Senate Bill 5051, overhauled the process for certifying both police officers and reserve officers. In October, a month after parking enforcement had moved from SPD, legal staff questioned how the legislation would affect police Chief Adrian Diaz’s ability to approve new special commissions.

“Of particular note, there was discussion of the challenges recently adopted state legislation will impose on the ability of the Seattle Police Chief to authorize Special Police Commissions going forward,” staff wrote in a readout of an October conversation between legal and policy officials overseeing the transition. “Representatives from SPD, SDOT and Law will dive deeper into the details of this one over the coming weeks.”

That dive continued for months, according to weekly updates sent to staff. “Staying in touch with the Law Dept regarding special police commissions,” read the updates week after week into late December – four months into the transition.

In late December, the law department finally concluded that parking enforcement officers should have special commissions issued by SPD.

But even after the legal advice from the city attorney’s office, Harrell wrote Thursday, SPD’s legal counsel continued to interpret the legal ramifications differently. He said SPD should have moved forward, despite their concerns, and that liability risks did not justify any delay.

A spokesperson for SPD said the department could not comment and deferred back to the mayor’s office.

Councilmember Lisa Herbold, who was involved in the transition early, said she shared Harrell’s concerns, particularly regarding SPD’s interpretation of state law.

There are “challenges of changing the status quo,” she said in a statement.

“Yet, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that we not allow agenda-driven legal analysis to resist reform, especially when public tax dollars are at stake.”

Lack of coordination

At the same time, SDOT lacked any central coordination for the transition, Harrell’s office concluded. SDOT had a project manager and a subcommittee dedicated to the effort, but these efforts did not have authoritative oversight to resolve disagreements and coordinate efforts, Harrell said. Meanwhile, an absence of involvement from the mayor’s office “led departments to act independently and in silos.”

“It was clear at the time that moving employees to a new department for the first time in 50 years was a challenging effort requiring significant coordination; however, the processes and management techniques needed to make the transfer successful were not prioritized or adopted,” Harrell wrote.

Driving the transition within the city was a belief that the “status quo” would prevail as the details of the transition were ironed out. Then-SDOT director Sam Zimbabwe told union officials in an August email that they intended to maintain status quo “to the greatest extent possible.” Union representatives testified that an even stronger commitment was made to them in an Aug. 27 meeting.

“The one thing that SDOT continued to tell us when we would bring up these concerns was that they – everything was going to remain the same,” Morrow testified in an ongoing labor dispute between the Seattle Parking Enforcement Officers Guild and the city of Seattle. SDOT, he said, assured that they had commitments from SPD through at least the end of 2021, and that they would put that in writing. Morrow testified he hadn’t seen that writing.

On Jan. 15, all special commissions expire and need to be reissued. Shortly after taking office, Harrell was under the impression parking enforcement officers already had them and they just needed renewing, said spokesperson Jamie Housen.

But in late March, Harrell learned that parking enforcement had still not been commissioned, prompting the canceled tickets, said Housen.

In his letter Thursday, Harrell said none of the documents provided to him upon taking office made mention of the disagreement over special commissions. Transition papers provided to the Seattle Times through a public records request show that, while Harrell was given a written briefing about parking enforcement’s transition, it made no mention of special commissions.

‘Defund the police’

Seattle City Hall first began discussing moving parking enforcement out of SPD in summer 2020, as protests spurred by George Floyd’s murder reverberated throughout the city. The move was intended to put a new face on an enforcement action that was not carried out by armed officers. It would represent the most significant reduction to SPD’s budget amid calls to “defund the police.”

City staff knew as early as fall 2020 that parking enforcement would need special authorization to do its work if it transferred to SDOT, according to emails. When legislation was released in 2021, it stated explicitly that their duties would be dictated by “the extent allowed by the commission of Parking Enforcement Officers as Special Police Officers.”

“There should be no debate that the Council was clear – in both ordinances passed regarding this personnel transfer – that PEOs needed to be issued special police commissions upon relocation to SDOT,” Harrell said.

Bumpy transition

The union representing parking enforcement officers opposed moving to SDOT from the start. Now, they’re locked in a labor battle with the city, arguing that material changes were made to their work environment – including losing access to the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services database and quick backup from SPD – without being bargained.

Meanwhile, the public is unlikely to notice a difference in parking enforcement: The patches on the officers’ uniforms still say Seattle police.

The city so far contends the mishap affects only parking tickets. Housen said 85% of eligible tickets have been refunded.

But Chuck Labertew, president of Lincoln Towing, isn’t so sure. He towed 10,256 cars in those seven months and auctioned off around 1,700. Many of those did not begin with a citation from parking enforcement, but some of them did.

The city pays him for his services, so he’s unconcerned about his bottom line. But he wonders about what he calls “John Lennon’s guitar” – the idea that someone could claim they’d left John Lennon’s guitar in their car when it was auctioned off after receiving a now-void citation and claim huge losses from the city.

“Honestly I think that there will be a class action on this,” he said.