Do we all deserve the boot?

Council of State and high-ranking state officials receive special license plates with very low numbers. So do legislators, DOT board members and other appointed officials. Whereas the tags might prevent the occasional parking ticket, moving violation or even yield a prime parking spot they can also present a problem, as State Auditor Beth Wood recently discovered.

Returning to her state-issued car, with the license plate “6,” after parking too long in a 15 minute parking zone, Wood discovered not only had she been given a ticket but she had been given the boot or, more accurately, her car had been booted, preventing her from moving it. Why so much fuss over a parking ticket, she wondered, only to discover that a car with the license plate “6,” the number designated for the State Auditor, had accumulated 5 unpaid tickets dating back to 2007. The tickets were for commercial loading zone violations and amounted to $245.

Wood protested she didn’t owe the tickets because she wasn’t the auditor until January 2009. The City of Raleigh wasn’t sympathetic and said the tickets belonged to the license plate, regardless of who drove it and she had to pay off the old fines to get her car out of hock.

Former State Auditor Les Merritt claims he didn’t know anything about the old violations. Sometimes employees will drive the car assigned to a Council of State member, but five such violations do stretch the plausibility of this defense. Merritt, who is now on the State Ethics Commission and started The Foundation for Ethics in Public Service, said if it could be proved he owed the fines he would pay up.

The incident raises questions at other levels. Why 5 loading zone violations for a state-owned passenger vehicle? Are state officials exempt from the laws you and I must follow? How could the State Auditor, the person responsible for uncovering fraud, corruption and other mistakes not know about his own? What proof would he need from the city of Raleigh in order to be satisfied?

More importantly, do we believe that mistakes or sins of the past are the responsibility and obligation to those who live and serve today? If so, we are all in a heap of trouble. For instance, are native-born southerners responsible for slave owners 100 years ago? Are all business owners responsible for labor abuses of the past? Are all Christians guilty because a few priests abused children? Is there a time limit on responsibility?

It occurs to us that a legal precedent has been established because of the Auditor’s boot. We all, to some extent, pay for the sins of those who have gone before us, but are we all guilty of parking violations because the Audior got the boot? Do we really want to open this can of worms?