Cleveland Clerk of Courts Earle B. Turner was peppered with questions by city council members Thursday about whether his office manipulated credit card payments and unfairly pressured drivers to pay more parking tickets than required to lift blocks on their vehicle registrations.
During a budget hearing on the operations of Cleveland Municipal Court, Council Member Brian Kazy said he wanted to “address the elephant in the room,” referring to a Signal Cleveland story published this week that examined the office’s parking ticket collection practices.
Turner disputed that his office ever misled drivers or manipulated their payments, though he acknowledged the practice of moving a $1 from some drivers’ credit card payments and applying it to other tickets.
“We don’t pressure people to pay tickets but we have a system that when a person comes to the counter our clerks are instructed to tell a person everything they owe the City of Cleveland,” he said toward the end of the hearing.
Council Member Austin Davis asked Turner why his office moved $1 from some drivers’ credit card payments – intended for specific parking tickets – and placed it on other tickets in their names.
Turner said doing so was a “workaround” because the clerk’s computer system did not properly track tickets linked to drivers’ registration blocks. As a result, he said, some drivers could get their registrations cleared by paying just one of their tickets tied to the blocks.
The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles puts a block on drivers’ registrations when they accumulate at least three unpaid parking tickets within a set period. The block is officially known as Drivers with Excessive Tickets Excluded from Registration and is referred to as a “DETER hold.”
Signal Cleveland reported that the practice of adjusting payments – and the policy of telling drivers they must pay all their tickets to clear a hold – led some drivers to pay hundreds of dollars more than necessary at the time.
Turner insisted that changing credit card payments was only done as a fix to ensure his office was enforcing the DETER law. But he said this stop-gap didn’t actually work, meaning drivers who didn’t deserve a release still got one. Turner said he could not pinpoint who first created the workaround.
Turner said his office did a study that showed the workaround was ineffective, a point he complained was not highlighted in the story. Signal Cleveland requested a copy of the study before the story was published, but Turner’s office never provided it. Turner’s office did not explain why it continued the workaround for decades if it was ineffective.
Turner’s office discontinued the practice of adjusting credit card payments last fall after a meeting with Cleveland’s law department. The change happened after Signal Cleveland began questioning Turner’s office and City Hall about the practice.
On Thursday during the hearing, Council Member Tanmay Shah expressed concerns about the actions of Turner’s office.
“I can empathize with my residents, who might try to get their blocks removed, pay for only the tickets required to get the blocks removed, and thought they did so,” Shah said.
Referring to the failed workaround, Turner said that every driver still got their DETER blocks removed.
“They got their registration,” he said. “They still got their plates. It did not stop anything.”
Shah said he appreciated Turner’s explanations but still had concerns, noting his own interaction with his office.
“I was actually one of the folks who had at one point numerous parking tickets,” he said. “I was required to pay off the full balance. I don’t know if it was part of the DETER system or not but I was asked to pay off the full balance, not the individual one.”