Bureaucracy makes me pull my hair out

About a year ago, a friend of mine left his broken-down, piece of garbage 1991 Bronco on the street outside my house. Two months later, it was still there. Another month passed, and one day, walking home from class, I noticed that the City of Corvallis, Oregon had placed a notice on the street. It read something like this:

"This street will be undergoing maintenance from (date) to (date) and no parking shall be allowed here for the duration of this work."

So I pulled out my phone, and I called my friend, who drove to town immediately and moved his vehicle. I thought to myself, "cool, you can leave your car on the street here for months on end, and nothing bad will happen to it."

Flash forward to on or around July 1, 2008. Having graduated with my BA in political science from Oregon State, the time came for me to say goodbye to Corvallis. The final day of my lease was June 30th, and my run down truck that I had intended to sell for scrap metal still sat in the driveway at my rented house. Knowing full-well that my lease was up, I, through considerable effort, managed to push my broken down truck with three flat tires into the street and "parked" it legally on the side of the street. Three weeks have now passed. I have had numerous phone calls from people interested in the vehicle, but all have been lowballs and I have been unable to make a special trip back to Corvallis in order to sell my truck.

Last Friday, I received a call from my previous landlord to tell me that my truck had been tagged for impound. Apparently, the City of Corvallis municipal code states that no vehicle can remain parked in the same spot for more than 48 hours at a time, and that violators were subject to impounding. I am currently more than an hour away, and am unable to make the trip down to Corvallis to meet someone to sell my vehicle, so I figured I would do the next best thing - call the City of Corvallis, attempt to negotiate some sort of extension, where I would have another week or so until I can make my final trip to Corvallis to assist my girlfriend in moving the last of her stuff out of her apartment, and sell my truck.

Unfortunately for me, the City of Corvallis' Parking Enforcement Bureau is a state-run agency. This means that it is apparently impossible to get a phone call answered or even returned during normal business hours. It doesn't matter that were I to drive to Corvallis, put my truck into neutral, and push it forward twenty feet, it wouldn't be impounded. Nor does it matter that my friend's Bronco was parked in the very same spot for three months without any trouble. My truck has been tagged for impound and I can do NOTHING about it, save spending a considerable amount of money and time to drive the eighty-odd miles to push my truck into a new parking spot. But wait, I can't intelligently do even this, seeing as how everyone I know in Corvallis has left for the summer, my landlord has gone back home to Arizona, and Parking Enforcement won't even answer my phone call to tell me if, indeed, my truck has even been towed yet.

Stupid government regulations enforced by lazy, worthless state employees cost everyday Americans like myself billions of dollars annually. My truck, worth about $500, has probably already been impounded, which carries with it a fee probably close enough to that figure that, adding the gas expense and the time involved with driving to deal with the problem, I'd likely barely break even.

How much better would this situation be if the City of Corvallis Parking Enforcement Bureau was a privately-owned service? Much.

Firstly, I'd be able to get my phone calls answered, or even *gasp* returned because a private service on contract with the city would be held liable for the way it treats its customers (citizens) and poor treatment of these customers would result in the loss of the service contract.

Secondly, were I able to get in touch with Parking Enforcement through this high tech device known as "the telephone", it is likely that a privately owned parking enforcement service would be likely to grant case-by-case exemptions from the 48-hour parking limit, once again a beneficial side-effect of a city service wherein customer service actually matters.

Thirdly, due to the profit motivations of a private entity, residents of Corvallis, also known as tax-payers, would be able to enjoy the services of high quality parking enforcement at a far lesser cost.

Now, as I do in every argument I make, I am searching my brain for a counter-argument to my position. In what ways are a government-run parking enforcement system preferable to one in private hands? I can think of none.

Parking enforcement is simply not in the same boat as "the judiciary". While I understand many of the arguments both for and against a government-run judiciary, my Libertarian leanings notwithstanding, I do indeed favor a state-run court system. Private institutions with the power to deprive individuals of their freedom are a scary thought, but parking enforcement isn't in the same boat. It is a service, and should it be provided by a private entity, it would be far better. One has to look no further than the average DMV branch to see precisely why government has no place providing services, even services that are a direct result of its intrusive regulation.

At this point, my only hope is that the inefficiencies in municipal government that have frustrated me to the point I was compelled to write this post will benefit me in that it will be another few weeks before the City manages to get around to impounding my vehicle.