New York City is owed $500m in parking fines. No one is paying up

theguardian.com:

The company behind the bright green marijuana-themed trucks that crowd Manhattan’s tourist districts is now paying the price for repeatedly breaking the law. They haven’t been fined for selling anything illicit, but for being top contributors to one of the city’s other infamous scourges: illegal parking.

The New York City department of finance confirmed to the Guardian that Weed World Candies had paid $200,000 in parking fines to get back several vehicles that had been towed in June by the city’s sheriff’s office.

But while Weed World is apparently getting on the right side of the law, its payments only equal a fraction of the $534.5m the city is owed in unpaid parking fines, according to the agency, as serial offenders skirt the rules in one of the world’s most maddening places to get around.

In Midtown Manhattan, where competition for parking is cutthroat in a grid of cramped and chaotic roadways, trucks habitually stop in bike lanes, forcing cyclists into busy traffic; cars double-park as drivers sprint into bodegas to buy their increasingly expensive bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches. Police often turn a blind eye, amid allegations that they illegally park their personal cars and harassed a cyclist who reported them.

Every day, thousands of these vehicles are slapped with bright orange envelopes with summonses ranging from $35 to $515. But many of their owners never pay: a public database of New York City parking and camera violations over more than two decades lists over 3m unpaid fines.

Like Weed World Candies – whose trucks mostly sport Alabama plates – some of the most flagrant individual offenders are registered out of state. It’s an open secret that many of these vehicles belong to New Yorkers trying to dodge fees,