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Comment by exfed

6 years ago

On top of that, if anything, forcing the government to fix it's bad code (insert snarky ambiguity between software code and legal code) can't be a bad thing. I'd buy the guy a beer.

9 comments

exfed

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kelnos  6 years ago

I'm pretty sure the government will continue to just waste money processing his appeals instead of making an effort to fix the system.

So in reality, this guy is indirectly wasting taxpayer money. Sure, the government is wrong in not fixing it, but knowing that the government won't fix it, but continuing to behave this way, is his fault.

jspash  6 years ago

The problem is it's a "a privately operated citation processing center" that's causing the problem. They might even be instructed to hand-enter a NULL for these cases.

I'm don't really see an incentive for the govt agency to do anything about it. It's no skin off their nose. They'll just keep sending the tickets.

  • cr0sh  6 years ago

    > "a privately operated citation processing center"

    In a way, this is the real bug - one that affects more areas of local government than most people know or understand.

    Our local governments are constantly seeking - and usually getting - private companies to do what should be public. The potential (and actual) repercussions to the system are serious.

    For instance, how do such arrangement affect FOIA requests? What about other forms of transparency? Are we really getting our money's worth as taxpayers? Is the money actually being used properly or are costs being inflated?

    It's a form of government privatization "by a thousand cuts" - we already know of the problems inherent in the system of privatizing out and contracting of private prisons; plus the loop they cause because of recidivism rates, because a repeat "customer" is better for the bottom line than one reformed for society. Which may be better for the private company, but has huge costs to society itself.

    I wouldn't doubt that similar issues are happening with the privatization of other parts of our local government. It is sickening to me, personally.

  • samthecoy  6 years ago

    At some point, can you not file some kind of harassment lawsuit? Is it legal to continue to send someone bills for which they aren't liable?

  • Grollicus  6 years ago

    Don't you have some kind of illegal prosecution laws? In my home country people could go to jail for that.

  • saalweachter  6 years ago

    That's assuming it's an error in their code.

    For all you know, they have a list of too-clever license plates (null, no plate, etc), and they purposefully divvy up the no plate tickets among them.

  • xxs  6 years ago

    "hand-enter a NULL for these cases" <-- should be a reserved word then.