Mayor Michael Bloomberg brushed off a question this morning about whether the city should get rid of the dashboard parking permits issued to some government employees that allow them to park in designated areas, but which critics say allow drivers to break the law with impunity. Instead, Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, took aim at special license plates issued to the city's press corps.
"I would take away all press plates," Bloomberg said. "If you have a license plate that has New York Press, that's designed to tell the traffic enforcement agent not to ticket you. I think that's an outrage and I couldn't agree with you more. We should get rid of that right away."
In fact, the plates are for designated zones -- and do not protect holders from tickets for illegal parking.
Matthew Roth, a spokesman for the group Transportation Alternatives, which encourages people to post pictures of illegally parked vehicles on a Web site, said the city should "enforce every instance of illegal parking."
Emi Endo