(The Center Square) – Chicago issued over 1 million parking tickets over the first half of 2022.
A report from the Chicago Sun-Times shows a 25.7% increase of tickets issued in 2022 over the same time period of 2021.
“To put it into perspective, the city has given out almost 1.1 million tickets as of June 30, 2022,” said Illinois Policy Institute’s Ann Miller. “You can compare that to the 850,000 tickets they gave last year.”
In 2019, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot led the Chicago City Council to approve an overhaul of its ticketing and debt collection system, including an end to the suspension of driver’s licenses over unpaid parking tickets as a part of Lightfoot’s effort to balance the city budget without raising taxes.
“Cook County has the highest Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings in the country, and a huge percentage of those filings relate to debt people owe to the city of Chicago,” Lightfoot said in 2019. “We are working hard to make sure that we relieve that burden and give people their cars back and allow them to participate in the economy.”
Earlier this year, Lightfoot also lowered the speeding target to 6 mph from 10 mph while issuing another 2.8 million fines to residents totaling $36 million in revenue for the city.
Miller said issuing these fines is a way of accomplishing her goal.
“They are taking this money to fill in the holes in their budget,” Miller said. “They need to look at reforming the budget, so they do not have to rely on these methods.”
The tickets range from $25 to $500 per infraction, with late fees for nonpayment. So far, the downtown and River North areas have experienced the most tickets issued, resulting in a 31% increase from last year.
