Comment by jaza

I assume that - even though there's a strong public interest argument for it - government orgs are prone to blanket banning the release of source code, for the same primary reason that businesses are prone to doing so. That is, too high a chance of sensitive data (passwords, tokens, IP addresses, etc) being hard-coded in all-too-often non-12-factor-aspiring code; and too much security / liability headache if said sensitive data gets out.

There's probably also some actual business logic that government orgs want to and are legally permitted to keep secret. In the OP's case of a parking ticket database, maybe there's software talking to that database, whose source code includes the logic of picking when / where parking inspectors should conduct a "random" blitz of issuing fines.