Comptroller's Audit Sparks Efforts to Improve
Nassau's Traffic & Parking Violations Agency

Mineola - An audit report issued today (Jan. 23) by Nassau County Comptroller Howard S. Weitzman calculates that the county's Traffic and Parking Violations Agency (TPVA)'s past severe operational backlogs, inadequate staffing and a large number of uncollected tickets cost the county some $40 million in potential revenue.

Prompted in part by a series of recommendations from Weitzman, TPVA has taken steps to improve its operations and recoup uncollected revenues for the county. The agency is responsible for adjudicating tickets issued for traffic and parking violations in the county, its three towns and several villages.

According to the comptroller's audit report, although increases in the amounts of fines and surcharges imposed have led to steady increases in TPVA's net revenues, the number of uncollected tickets continued to rise to unacceptable levels due primarily to serious delays in ticket processing, collections, and the scheduling of conferences, hearings and trials. Weitzman noted that tickets were often not processed until well after their return dates and defendants could wait approximately two years for a trial. His report indicated that underutilization of courtrooms in the afternoons, evenings and weekends had led to conference scheduling delays that exceed nine months. These delays resulted in revenue losses to participating municipalities because tickets became uncollectable and were routinely dismissed by judicial hearing officers.

Weitzman said that nearly half of the tickets issued in recent years have become uncollectable due to the lack of a comprehensive and systematic program for the timely collection of revenues from outstanding tickets. He noted that TPVA's failure to adopt new technology promptly exacerbated the situation by hampering the processing of tickets, not-guilty pleas and dismissals.

"My office's audit report recommends that the agency use technology to become more customer-friendly," said Weitzman. "I am pleased that after we issued our draft findings to the agency, it plans to change its practices to enable people to pay fines over the Internet and by mail through the use of credit/debit cards and e-checks," he added.

Weitzman said he has been informed that the agency has taken actions to limit the lines of people who have congregated outside TPVA's offices on many days waiting for conferences or trials, to pay tickets and to plead not guilty. The comptroller notes that TPVA currently has only one payment location; New York City has 12 payment locations in Nassau County alone. His audit report also attributes delays to inadequate staffing.

In her response to the comptroller's draft audit, contained within the audit report, Patricia Reilly, who was named TPVA's executive director last October by County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi, notes that the agency has focused its staff resources on eliminating ticket data-entry backlog, improved the scheduling of conferences and trials, eliminated the long lines of people waiting outside its offices, created a better working environment for its staff, and upgraded its computer and telephone systems.

Reilly apprised the comptroller's office in her response that the agency also is improving its fine collections operations, noting that check deposits are now current, an ATM has been installed and personal checks are now accepted.

 Viewing documents in PDF format requires the free Adobe Reader
If you have trouble opening PDF documents, click here

Traffic & Parking Violations Agency Audit Report January 2003 (~ 297kB .pdf file - 56 pages )

Corrective Action Plan ( ~ 62 kB - 15 page "pdf" file )