WPCNR'S The Sunday Bailey. News & Commentary By John F. Bailey. August 5, 2007: So The New York Times called me this week asking what I thought about the Marine Recruiting Office unpaid parking tickets, being pursued by the White Plains Department of Parking.

I told their reporter I thought the Marines should pay the tickets, but I had not been following the story since it had been played for laughs much to the Marines’ embarrassment – and the Commissioner of Parking himself had told reporters he had offered the Marines a  $50,000 settlement, about half on the dollars owed. It seemed like just another U.S. Government Bureaucracy Bungle.

Sounded fair to me, I told the reporter, but what I did not understand is why the Marine Corps refused to pay the tickets, that was the only mystery. That nagged at me.

So I made phone calls last week and found out, as Paul Harvey says, the other side of the story.  See if you think this is what really happened:

We  may have yet another embarrassment to the Delfino Administration which loves to squeeze dollars out of citizenry.

Talking to Marine Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Butler last week, I found out why the Marines don’t feel they should have to pay the tickets.

The city  allegedly was systematically shaking down the Marines at the Chester-Maple Parking Garage every month when checks from the Army Corps of Engineers paying for parking permits for the Marines’ cars were not credited in a timely manner by the City of White Plains due to the financial process.

It appears to be a cute little scam worthy of organized crime.  

According to Sergeant Butler, the Marine Recruiters would show up at the Chester and Maple office the first of the month to pick up the Parking Permits, and were told they had not been paid for yet, so they would not issue the Marines the permits to display, taking away the Marines armor against the White Plains Parking Bandits -- the dreaded Citationaires. 

Since the recruiters had no other  place to park, they parked anyway at Chester & Maple – and each day it took for the check to clear – the White Plains Parking Enforcers wrote them tickets for parking we believe at metered space without a Parking Permit. A parking official says the Marines have to pay like everybody else.  Granted.

But if you know the cars always park there and usually have permits, why would you write the tickets just because you can?

White Plains, according to the Marines, was giving them tickets for space they paid for because the city could -- technically.  The effect would be the same as if Mr. and Mrs. or Ms. White Plains paid for a parking space, got a quarter stuck in the slot and the time did not register (Parking Enforcement Officer comes along sees violated meter, writes ticket).

Trouble is they did Pay.

The Marines claim the city did not record the payments in a timely manner. The Marines assure me the Army Corps of Engineers issued the checks on time every month.

The Parking Enforcement Officers should have known the Marine vehicles were regularly parked at that garage every day. Come on! How cheap a money making scheme is that? No enforcer should have ticketed Marine cars which have been parking at Chester & Maple for years – regulars.

Isn’t that clever? You don’t process the checks on the books in time, and ticket the Marines probably $15-$25 a pop. This has gone on for years, according to Butler and previously it had been worked out (or perhaps forgotten). But Butler said the city never told them about it until last December.

The Marines told WPCNR that more than half the $94,000 owed stems from the tickets and late fees Marines received when the city would not credit the Army Corps of Engineers payments at one location – Chester & Maple Municipal Garage.

The Marine Recruiting Office ignored the tickets, Butler said because the recruiters felt it would be taken care of when the payments came in. But, even if this was a mistake on the Marines part, trusting the city (something no one should ever do in this town), why didn’t the city address the situation? The city claims they did and have been ignored. Sergeant Butler’s statement issued Friday shows why.

Like pick up the phone when they noticed this like a few years ago, instead of running up the tickets because the city could?

Could it be the city needed the money from the tickets which had been apparently previously just forgiven (but we are just speculating here that they were forgiven or ignored by the administration).

Sounds like a scam on the Marines to me, doesn’t it? Whose brilliant idea was this any way to suddenly go after the Marines on these tickets during the budget crush year of 2006-2007? What a coincidence the city needed money in 2006-2007?

On the other unpaid tickets – the Marines say they cannot trace who was driving the cars at the time. On other hand – the city is really at fault there for not going after the tickets at the time, in my opinion – when they were issued. Someone should have run the registrations on government vehicles and told the Marines about it.

The Marines are at fault on those and just because they cannot find the drivers is no reason they should not be paid. The Chester Maple tickets are an entirely different matter if what the Marines say is the truth.

The Marine Corps assures me the Army Corps of Engineers paid the checks for the Parking Permits by the first of the month because they have a lease on the space with the city. The city denies having a lease.

So the city, instead of turning over the permits waited until the check cleared. You have to hand it to the city.  

They really stick to the rules where money is concerned, especially when they see an opportunity to make more money on the innocent -- to make more money on meters where the time has been paid for.

I think a phone call to the Marines before the moneys got up to $94,000 might have been helpful, don’t you? Like maybe before it got up to $5,000, maybe?  Does anybody think in government?

White Plains may be the only city in America trying to shake down the Marine Corps.

The Mayor, who proudly wears his World War II American Legion cap in every Memorial Day and Veterans Day Parade, should not have allowed this to happen and get this far. He has been in office since 1997. Now in 2006-2007 his administration paints the Marines as scofflaws? And everybody believes that? And everybody thinks it’s funny?

The Mayor will be at the funeral of the first Marine from White Plains to die in Baghdad. He is a great patriot. A patriotic thing to do would be to intervene here and call off the parking pit bulls and reach an accommodation on this obvious overzealous enforcement maneuver.

It’s an embarrassment. A disgrace. The city should write off the losses – the Marines paid for the  garage space – all of it, they had an agreement and the tickets on the Chester Maple Garage were issued as a money-making dirty trick by the city.  The Marine story is they paid, and the city record-keeping created a situation that allowed them to ticket the Marine vehicles that had paid for the space. Really bad communication on the city’s part.

I have asked to get a copy of the agreement the Army Corps of Engineers has with the city. If there is no agreement, then the city may be technically correct on ticketing before the payment is in. If there is an agreement, then the city was treating the Marines disingenuously.  Even if the city is technically correct, by withholding the permits, it was not a nice thing to do, was it?

And speaking of shaking a person down on a technicality –

The Board of Elections and the Democratic City Committee were about to throw out Candyce Corcoran’s hard earned petitions – all of them—this week because the Board of Elections did not know how to tell candidates to fill out their own petitions.  The candidate asked the Board of Elections if she had to fill out a certain section. A Board clerk said no. She didn’t.

When she filed her petitions the geniuses who run the White Plains Democratic Party said “Ah Ha! Snerdley, we’ve got her now!” and filed an objection to deny all her 67 pages of petitions because she did not list city and county in the Witness Identification Information Section.

Trouble is the geniuses at the Democratic City Committee Headquarters – better known as the White Plains Politburo or is it Poliburro – weren’t even aware of the Nassau County decision in 2003 that ruled you could not throw out petitions if the address and city of the signature taker was already on the ballot.

Ms. Corcoran informed the Board of Elections who apparently did not know this decision either.

So let’s save some money folks and get rid of the Board of Elections.

This Sunday the Democratic Party “leadership” which issued this challenge has banana cream pies on their faces. Not only did they think it was all right to deny an office-seekers’ petitions on a technicality, but they thought they could. And felt no qualms about doing it.

It has been an embarrassing week for the Parking Bandits and the Democrats with No Clothes.

This is leadership?

What is so puzzling is the sanctimonious way the city told all who would listen that the Marines were scofflaws and the city was just seeking their money from the Marines, without explaining that most of the tickets were from the parking garage lease/agreement payment misunderstanding .  

And the self-righteous manner the Democratic Leadership felt it is perfectly all right to keep people off the ballot when their candidates were threatened.

Where are the editorial boards of the nation on this outrageous behavior?

Always keep your hand on your wallet in White Plains, the light fingers of the city may be about to lift it.