LiveWire

A post by Maynard.

This isn’t an “important” story, but it’s revelatory. In a small way, the abuse of handicap parking, and government’s failing efforts to address the problem, exemplify our cultural malaise. When the responsibility for compassion is transferred from human beings to bureaucracies, the result is systematic dysfunction and misery.

You know the rules. People with handicap placards get convenient parking places and they don’t have to pay for metered parking. We all understand this and are generally sympathetic.

From the Los Angeles Times: “Fraudulent use of disabled parking placards explodes in last decade”.

The key points:

First, an ever-growing segment of the public claims handicapped status:

California, which has 24 million licensed drivers, will issue 2.1 million permanent placards this year, up from 1.2 million a decade ago. In Los Angeles County, about 621,000 of nearly 6 million licensed drivers have placards…

… At any given moment, on any given street, more than a third of the vehicles displaying the tags — and parking without paying — are doing so illegally, say officials with the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

It’s easier to rip off “the system” than to steal from a person. Most people have enough conscience not to take granny’s parking place. Ah, but cutting a bit of slack from the state is much easier to justify. There’s plenty more where that came from. And the more people take advantage of the situation, the more it seems like an okay thing to do. Are you going to be the only loser who stands on principle and pays his way?

How many of us truly need to get pushed to the front of the line? More and more people assert the claim; twice as many as ten years ago. And, as the article notes, friends of people with legitimate handicap placards tend to “borrow” them, so placard use is higher than the raw numbers would indicate. (For more numbers, here’s a related article from San Francisco a few years ago, “Disabled placards proliferate”.)

Next, there’s a lot of room for fraud, since the laws make it difficult or impossible to override or even question a doctor’s note. And that would be a reasonable position — who wants a bureaucrat to second-guess a doctor? — if not for the sense that too many placards are being issued.

…questionable medical practices undoubtedly contribute to the problem. Under privacy laws, the DMV may not ask a motorist why he or she has a placard. When enforcement officials in Maryland attempted to investigate doctors’ prescriptions for placards, Williams said, they “were met with a fierce response from the medical community.”

In California, discussions about changing the vehicle code haven’t gotten far because of resistance from advocacy groups. “I don’t want us in our zeal to put something in place that’s going to screw over [disabled] people,” said Margaret Johnson, advocacy director for Disability Rights California in Sacramento.

Again, we create a situation that’s ripe for abuse. Is it surprising that abuse becomes the norm?

Third, the government is now doing something about the abuse, and that’s good. Except that the reason the government is getting aggressive isn’t to set a bad situation right, no. As the Times reports, the government’s motivation is mundane.

Now, with the state and municipalities in financial crisis, the DMV is cracking down on placard fraud.

So the crackdown isn’t about serving the people, it’s about extracting more money from the people.

This is what we’ve come to expect from government. Dangerous prisoners are released to save money (thanks to sweetheart deals with the powerful unions, it costs vastly more to incarcerate prisoners in California than other states), while traffic enforcement is expanded to collect money. On the street where I live, parking enforcement has become draconian in recent months, and most residents have received $80 tickets. Enforcement is applied, not based upon the threat to society, but upon the impact on the balance sheet. The criminals go free while the relatively harmless are targeted and fined.

With respect to handicap parking, we’re all happy to see abusers get their comeuppance. But, broadly speaking, we need to ask whether our ever-expanding social safety net does more harm than good in the final analysis. Are we merely empowering bureaucrats and inviting abuse and generally degrading our national character? Is the government helping people, or merely taking care of its own? The theory behind the coercive nanny state is beautiful, but thoughtful residents of the real world realize that the reality is something else.