Penalty-based revenue for Springfield a quandary.

When you use a parking meter in downtown Springfield, Illinois, you can just let it run out and pay a simple flat-rate fine. If you're one of the many people who work downtown and earn enough to not care about the small inconvenience of a parking ticket, you don't have to care that there is an unknown quantity of customers that could not find a parking space so they could spend their money at downtown businesses. Customers like myself, who long ago gave up on downtown altogether because of the parking situation.

When the idea of raising the parking fine was proposed at City Council, it was immediately tabled: Parking fine plan tabled - Springfield, IL - The State Journal-Register

The idea that raising fines would increase revenue is a quandary because the idea of increased fines may be enough to motivate people to keep feeding the meters, or reduce their time spent parked by planning their activities in advance.

What is known is that it usually takes more than an hour to shop and eat a meal downtown, and that's what the underground parking is for. Unfortunately, those who work downtown use the underground parking garage, so a lot of spaces are full with people who frequently brown bag their lunch.

Another question is this: If someone parks at a meter and leaves their car there all day without feeding the meter, how many tickets do they get in one day? Can you bribe or intimidate a parking enforcement officer? Who is capable of threatening the job of a parking enforcement officer?

If a scofflaw only gets one ticket a day, parking would be cheaper than continuing to feed the meter, and potential customers are blocked out.

If the fines are increased and the resulting behavior is a higher turnover of available parking spaces for customers, the city won't reap the benefits of penalty-based revenue, but the businesses will benefit from more customers. Still, this is less money for the city directly.

Penalty-based revenue was a concept that, if imagined before the end of alcohol prohibition, we would still have alcohol prohibition because the government would reap huge revenues by auctioning off the property seized by those who broke the law. This is precisely why Marijuana will never be legalized.

Based on the penalty-based revenue approach to government funding, the city must find a balance between parking fees and parking fines that will maximize revenue.

The fines should be just enough to keep the scofflaws from changing their behavior and feeding the meter or driving off to let a customer park, yet the city must increase revenues from normal parking fees. Clearly, the numbers side-by-side in this case would render a verdict in favor of fewer new customers downtown if it means more revenue for the city government.

The danger to increasing fines is that it might change the behavior of the scofflaws and result in less revenue, like the smoking ban is resulting in fewer smokers, which in turn is resulting in less revenue from cigarette sales taxes. The smoking ban was a momentary lapse of memory about penalty-based revenue, and could be defined as an example of penalty-based revenue extinction, much like alcohol prohibition, a mistake the government will never make again, especially with Marijuana.