from the Your-honor,-there-was-a-tree-branch-blocking-the-sign! dept.
Utilizing FOIA and some clever software Mr. Chapman quickly identifies a troubled spot for parking in Chicago and gets results!
http://mchap.io/using-foia-data-and-unix-to-halve-major-source-of-parking-tickets.html
The story relates how the author used Freedom of Information Act requests to gather raw data on parking tickets issued in Chicago. What he received was a semicolon-delimited text file containing a great number of data entry errors. The author outlines the steps taken to clean and extract data on a likely problematic parking location. Armed with this data, he visited the location and discovered very confusing signage. He reported this to the city, who rectified the signage. This led to a 50 percent decrease in the number of tickets issued for that location.
I immediately asked myself three things
1. How much more effective has that corner become?
2. Who's grumbling about the loss of revenue?
3. What would happen if more of us did this very thing?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:04PM (21 children)
what would happen is that you would lose your job, because instead of doing your job you're doing the city's job.
what you should do is publicize the story (as you are already doing), and tell the city that if they don't have someone doing this for a living, they should. in the sense that you gather signatures in order to propose it at the city counsil or whatever the local procedure is.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:31PM (13 children)
There is certainly someone responsible in city government for doing this work. They just are not doing it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:57PM (10 children)
> There is certainly someone responsible in city government for doing this work. They just are not doing it.
Because if they actually did it like this guy did, they would be fired.
You think a 50% reduction in income would make your superiors happy? Quite frankly you would be more successful in government if you found a way to increase ticket revenue (without making it blatant to the public). You would increase the income of your department, plus the actual enforcement department could demand a higher budget due to the increase in violations. Everybody wins (except the public, but that is by design).
The only reason they fixed this is because when faced with a member of the public, newspapers, and the facts, they could not weasel their way out of it, nor could they just put it under "recommendation" and forget about it. I suspect they will be worried that now this has been found out, other such "profit spots" will be discovered by the public, and before you know it, their overall income will drop.
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Wednesday August 15 2018, @01:29PM (2 children)
And that is why I have point #2! Grumbling in the government due to loss of revenue often leads to someone being punished or fired. Power has to be used and protected!
From the article it was about $60k/year reduction in revenue. That is a LOT of money someone is no longer pocketing.
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:38PM (1 child)
Chicago sold off its parking space to private interests for 50 years. If ticket revenue is no longer going to the city, they have no more interest in confusing signage.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:45PM
If the confusing signage is impacting residents, they may well vote the people allowing such a situation out.
Also, more subtle effects, like in my township, there was a confusingly labeled no-parking spot near a corner. This caused the garbage truck not to be able to get on to the street, meaning garbage could not be collected if someone parked on the corner.
A complaint to the township resulted in a new sign and yellow paint that makes it quite clear. Additionally they stepped up towing people that parked illegally, and enforced the ban on unregistered and undriveable vehicles stored on public streets.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:00PM (3 children)
I expect people who rant at how evil the government is don't actually know anybody who works in the government. I do. As a general rule, they are good people who are trying to do the right thing. Do you think on average the post office employees are thinking "if we intentionally misdeliver mail, we can ask for a bigger budget," or that teachers are thinking "I should call in extra sick days, because I can!" Of course there are bad apples, and there are occasional massive conspiracies, but they are the exception, rather than the rule. Why do you think that the Chicago Department of Transportation would punish a civil servant who is making the system work better.
I get really annoyed at the commonly accepted cynical view that "government is the problem." More likely there was an opportunity for improvement here, it was brought to the attention of the Department of Transportation in a credible way, and it was acted upon to improve the lives of all the citizens. It's just like reporting pot holes, or street lights being burned out. There is bureaucratic red tape to get the right person informed, but that's because government is complicated (like any large corporation), not by design.
You might try reporting "that annoying stop light which is always out of sync with the rest of the street and causing traffic nightmares" one of these days. You may be surprised when the local civil planners actually respond.
This is a valid argument, except it isn't true. Different departments have different budgets. It is way oversimplified to think of it all as "the government." For example, do you know how much the members of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) dislike the Transportation Security Administration (TSA)? Why would the Department of Transportation would engage in such dangerous actions to benefit the Police and the Court?
The main times you see this kind of mustache-twirling abuse is at a higher level than departments, such as the city council installing red light cameras because it increases the overall general budget to the city. That's way above the level of a civil servant and a manager.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:56PM (1 child)
> It's just like reporting pot holes,
This. I report pot holes in my vicinity, in particular ones along the edge of the road where I bicycle. When they get fixed (usually a week or two, weather depending), I send a short "thanks" email to the guy I've found at the Department of Transportation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @07:29PM
This kind of action is particularly effective, especially the thank you note.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:58PM
> The main times you see this kind of mustache-twirling abuse is at a higher level than departments, such as the city council installing red light cameras
That does a lot of damage to their reputation. If that was the only bit of corruption going on, it wouldn't be so bad. But some city governments seem determined to find out how many scams they can pull, and how far they can push the voters. We had a mayor who was a decent fellow until he got into a shady deal to build the world's tallest building in our humble community of about 50,000. He made a cool million flipping the land where the building was to go, and lost the next election. His replacement was a religious zealot who, with her fellow zealots, went on a moral crusade to run all the liquor stores out of town, using every trick they could, not caring about the legality. Cost the city plenty in lost revenue and lost lawsuits. She lasted only one term, then her replacement was another one termer, a heavy drug user with serious kidney problems and a drug dealer husband. She was absent much of her term due to her illnesses, or so we were given to believe.
> I get really annoyed at the commonly accepted cynical view that "government is the problem."
You'll just have to accept a constant low level of suspicion and distrust. Corruption is the problem, power corrupts, and government has a lot of power.
I wish the high level stuff was all, but there are plenty of petty officials who seem to delight in throwing bureaucratic obstacles in people's way.
By now, I expect nearly everyone has heard dozens of stories of police abuse of power-- their profiling and racism, and their escalation of situations particularly against the mentally ill.
However, government tone and manner can be the worst problem. When they act cynical towards citizens, treat citizens like we're a bunch of takers and helpless losers, with finger wagging at us for breaking petty rules as if we're naughty little children-- all the more infuriating when those rules are bullcrap rules designed to line someone's pockets in the name of safety or whatever-- when they take that attitude, they're going to get it right back at them. They rob us of dignity.
Departments whose entire mission is enforcing some petty rules can be a huge problem. They're staffed by people who know they'll be out of a job if there isn't any enforcing to be done. A good example of this is lawn care. The city had a few restaurants dish out some food poisoning. There is a state agency that handles restaurant inspections, but the city decided to start up their own health inspection department. So far, I know of one restaurant that for months regularly served spoiled food that poisoned people. They were not stopped by the city's health inspection, they went out of business. The city also has a group that inspects homes when they are sold.
All of these enforcement actions are done in a punitive manner, as if it is a given that the owner knew all about the rules and was deliberately flouting them. Instead of helping citizens comply with reasonable regulations, citizens are treated as if they're criminals who got caught trying to break the rules, and fined out the wazoo.
The typical lawn care violation for letting your grass get too tall is a case in point. It is loaded with assumptions that tall grass is a "nuisance" which attracts undesirable "vermin", and that "we take pride on our city's appearance" and you are a dirty rotten deadbeat who doesn't care about your neighbors' property values. I found the notice highly offensive, and I let the city officials have it for having dared to talk to citizens in such an insulting and belittling manner. And I voted against all the incumbents in the next election. Also, checking the regulations, I found several discrepancies in which the letter omitted various mitigating circumstances. It was so obviously written to scare and bully the recipient. Stupid to make enemies of their own citizens with such ham handed treatment.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:41PM
The person who designs where to put parking signs is not paid by the revenue of parking tickets.
Otherwise that would be a bit of a conflict of interest.
They are probably just a general civil engineer on the municipality's staff, or a contractor in places with no need for a full time engineer.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:52PM
They can always switch to speed traps, those never fail to produce revenue.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by easyTree on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:06AM
In Manchester, UK - the local council has made 'badly signed' access changes to the main bus route resulting in fines of £9M ($11.5M) in six months!
For example there are T-junctions where you are fined if you turn left OR right, right next to a major hospital.
They've shown no reluctance to weasel out of their responsibilities to the public.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/oxford-road-bus-lane-fines-14326548 [manchestereveningnews.co.uk]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:58PM (1 child)
And that, in my humble opinion, is the core of today's problems with govt: we think we can go on living life, trusting that govt. workers are doing their jobs at all, let alone correctly, thoroughly, and to We the People's satisfaction.
Right now, loosely through youtube, twitter, facebroke, etc., govt. officials, police, etc., are being outed. We need more of that, structured and organized. We need to elect officials who want govt. kept clean and work with Citizen Watchdog-type organizations, Innocence Project, etc.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few." Wendell Philips http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/01/eternal-vigilance-is-price-of-liberty.html [thisdayinquotes.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:14AM
Agreed. The whole concept of “the government” as an other to fight against is antithetical to democracy. A democracy is governed by the people. This usually involves electing people and paying civil servants to handle most of the details, but we shouldn't forget that governing is something all of us are in charge of together, not something done by some alien entity called “the government”.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:55PM (3 children)
Some people have hobbies. For some its goats and sheep, for some it's analyzing parking tickets in their cities.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:06PM (2 children)
Why can't it be both?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:42PM (1 child)
*places parking ticket on illegally parked goat*
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:18AM
Honest, Judge... the goat *ate* the ticket!!!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:17PM (1 child)
what would happen is that you would lose your job, because instead of doing your job you're doing the city's job.
And thus dies civic-mindedness (and pretty much any sense of community that once helped glue us together as a people), as we all crawl into our little corners, cover our eyes, and ignore what affects our fellow citizens (or even ourselves) because "it isn't our job." It reminds me of filthy American hospitals (where I've spent far too much time myself, and with my spouse) that never get cleaned properly because no nurse is going to pick up a piece of trash and put it in the garbage (it's beneath him/her and "not their job"), cleaning services are underpaid, understaffed, overworked, and apathetic/demoralized, etc. etc.
We will die beneath a mountain of false dichotomy, false equivalency, whatabouttism, but most of all, a complete absence of community and civic-mindedness as we all retreat into our own shells and refuse to help identify or solve problems because "it isn't our job." And some rightwing-fuckwit will tell us if we do otherwise, we'll "rightly" lose our jobs because we should use every waking moment to enrich our employer and 0.1%er overlords, rather than spending any time voluntarily helping our community.
Nice world you've helped create. The only bright spot (if you can call it that) is it will probably implode under its own weight before too much longer. Pity it's going to take us all down with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @04:37PM
You have to be careful in some place for doing things not in your job description due to safety concerns, unions, liability. I went to the dmv 20 years ago and after waiting in line for two hours, was told that I had to have a card filled out and that I'd have to wait another two hours.
Thankfully, those situations have largely but not entirely gone away.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:50PM
A) there are plenty of retired, semi-retired, etc. in the world who are more than capable of doing this kind of thing
B) you are suggesting that the city should put someone on payroll to go out and reduce revenues?
C) gather signatures, I suppose you think we should all wait for elections to effect change in our government too?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:08PM (3 children)
Only in Australia - https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/motoring/on-the-road/is-this-the-most-confusing-parking-sign-in-australia/news-story/6dabaf5e2b14f6bb9c1761b2a19fbccc [news.com.au]
Take a chill pill and have a kit kat [twitter.com]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:49PM (2 children)
I enjoy that it is "four-hour parking from 6pm to 10pm", when there are only 4 hours between 6pm and 10pm.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:33PM
and there is a typo
(Score: 3, Informative) by pipedwho on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:49PM
It’s ‘ticket’ parking. Meaning you can pay for up to fours during that period. So you can pay for less or pay for the whole block. There’s no sign for ‘unlimited’ metered parking, which would defeat the supposed purpose for timed and metered parking, which is to better share the available space.
The real problem is the constant increasing city population density with virtually no increase in parking spaces.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday August 15 2018, @02:44PM (10 children)
Or, for the suspicious-of-government among us, to what other corner did the city move the confusing, ticket-generating signage?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:44PM (9 children)
It wouldn't be strange if the opposite became true, some other location in the city became 50% more profitable due new parking signs put in strategic confusing way. And the good will of this man has enlighted the authority and helped them to increase the parking ticket revenue.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:55PM (8 children)
Exactly, last time it (likely) happened by accident, but now that he's pointed out how to do it they can replicate this strategy, all over the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:58PM (7 children)
Have you seen parking in Southern Europe, South America, Africa, or most of Asia ?
I wouldn't be surprised if trying Byzantine rules as you see in the US resulted in all signs being systematically destroyed/removed, and cops looked the other way because they have better things to do than participate in making their own life harder.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:07PM (6 children)
Cops are weird - in Miami they were too good to chase (or even attempt to catch by any method) car thieves, even when said thieves were doing hit and runs with their stolen cars and toting a little unbuckled kid down the boulevard at 70mph... when I told the cops I saw these clowns coming out of the same apartment complex two mornings in a row they came back with some lame bullshit about how the judges just kick them loose even when they do bring them in (same car thieves who hit and ran me and a city bus a couple of weeks earlier...)
Meanwhile, they'll run a brutal meter maid battalion all over town, I suppose because that's easy money from most of the population, and an easy option to arrest the people who ignore the tickets if they should ever want an excuse...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:04AM (5 children)
Not sure about now, but in early 90s when I started my NY life with driving a cab, we were getting parking tickets while waiting for red light. Why? Well, the garage would pay the tickets and deduct from our earnings. Fighting paid ticket in court was pretty much impossible because it had a guilty mark.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:35AM (4 children)
Sounds about right. I lived in Manhattan for about a month in 1988, parked on the street for a couple of weeks until it rained at night - cover for some idiot to break my window and steal an equalizer from my car that I only paid $10 for a few months earlier... parked in a garage in Queens after that. I got a couple of tickets while I was street parking - from confusing signs like in TFA. When I went to pay those, I was impressed by the concept of "scofflaw" the people who just didn't care about the fines, they'd pay them - whatever. Denmark has a good answer for them: speeding fines, at least, are assessed as a percentage of annual income.
Anyway, while I was in the queue of parking ticket payment, the whole Kafkaesque scene looked to have nothing at all to do with justice, fairness, or any such concepts - it was just something to be avoided if at all possible, and also somewhat of a rite of passage because it seemed that, sooner or later, anybody who parked a car in the city would end up needing to pay some of those fines, regardless of how careful they were.
On my last day in town, I "lived dangerously" and parked out front of the building I was leaving from (easier to carry luggage) - probably a full 45 minutes before it was legal to do so. Got lots of dirty looks from the campers in their cars on the other side of the street waiting to snag a spot as soon as it was legal to move. Got away clean, no ticket that time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 16 2018, @02:43AM (3 children)
My brother had his car stolen when he lived in D.C. The most efficient part of the D.C. government is the parking enforcement. They found his car, and only troubled to notify him of it after it had racked up a month's worth of parking tickets and been towed and impounded. He had to go to court to remind them he had reported it stolen. Got all the tickets dismissed.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:31AM (2 children)
Bet he didn't win the towing or impound feed back...
We had a car stolen in Miami early Saturday morning (rain again, covered the noise of smashing the window, again.) Reported it stolen at 9am, looked for it ourselves until 2pm - at 2pm we were actually looking in the exact spot it had been recovered from at 1pm. Called the authorities 4x every 2 hours from noon until 6pm - no word of recovery. Finally left town after the 4pm call to go on the trip we were supposed to leave on at 9am. Came back Sunday night at 6pm, called, still no word of recovery. Called at 9am Monday - reply: "Oh, yes, your car was recovered at 1pm on Saturday, it's at such and such impound lot with towing and 48 hours storage fees accrued already, fees are probably higher than the residual value of the car after the joyriders got done with it, you'll need to go sign it over to the impound lot and pay them for whatever you owe them above the salvage value of the car."
F-ing assholes, we paid them off, got a $10 towing strap and pulled it back to the house ourselves, then sold it to a junk dealer for about $50 more than we had paid in fees. All in all would have been easier to sign it over to the towing yard, but I'll be damned if I'll be any more compliant with that racket than is absolutely required by law. Oh, another gem: visited the car Monday morning around 10am, it started and ran, shut it down. Got back at 4pm with the truck and towing strap, car wouldn't start anymore and had signs of additional looting since 10am.
Towing yards are legalized theft rings, all they need is any legal excuse to engage and then they ream whoever they come into contact with. Asshole at our place of business put up "parking permit required" signs and handed out permits to us, the tenants of the last 10 years who always paid our rent on time. The guy who actually handed over the last 100+ on-time rent checks to the landlord forgot his permit in his other car one morning, landlord called the towing company at 3pm, and at 4pm when trying to go home our guy had to pay $200 to get his car back from the towing yard 1 block down the street from the lot where they towed him from 30 minutes earlier.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 16 2018, @09:44PM (1 child)
Wow, yeah, that's a worse racket than any I've experienced. I'll have to ask my brother if he got the impound fees back.
Cities run roughshod over us when we take that sort of crap lying down. Sometimes the only way to get their attention is make a big stink-- document (record on video) their conduct and report the minions to their superiors in the city government who just might possibly not know about it. If they do know, can subtly threaten them by mentioning that a copy of the recording can be given to the media, or posted online where it just might go viral. Ask for hearings, show up and embarrass the politicians at the next council meeting, vote against them, boycott the city and let the Chamber of Commerce know the city's shenanigans are costing them business, report them to state and federal agencies who really do work to bust corrupt cities and shut down their rackets, and even sue the bastards. Of course they've carefully set their grift small enough that it costs more to fight than to just pay up. They count on that.
The Los Angeles airport tried to stick us with a parking ticket. Got us at a parking meter that I had timed down to the minute. We were picking up my brother, but he had changed flights. So I hurried out to put more money in. I found the meter had expired, and there was already a ticket on it. It should have been close to expiring, but not quite expired. I had suspicions of parking enforcement having hurried the meter along, or maybe the meter ran fast, and they weren't too scrupulous about making sure meters kept time accurately. As we didn't live in California, we felt there wasn't much they could do about it if we skipped town without paying the ticket. That's usually the simplest way to deal with a parking meter racket. Naturally I did not put any more money in the meter, not after they had the rudeness to ticket us. So they lost money on that deal, and serve them right.
No matter what crap they try, I always strive to punish them right back. Make them lose business, embarrass them, cost them the money it takes to hold a hearing, whatever. I know the hearings are kangaroo courts-- but I'm not really trying to win, I know the deck is stacked against me. I'm just costing them money so they don't profit from me, collect less in punitive fines than it cost them to run the hearing.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 16 2018, @10:11PM
The "permit required" towing story comes from Miami Beach - a little city of 20,000 residents next to the urban metro 1M+ population, only 1 of our 15 employees actually lived in Miami Beach and could influence politicians with their vote. This is the same Miami Beach that blocked rail transit from the bigger city because they prefer not to have "rabble" getting easy-cheap access to their clubs and restaurants, if you can't afford a car and valet parking, then they don't want you there anyway. All of Dade county is a mish-mash of these smaller cities, even the big ones only had ~300,000 population back then - it makes the politicians... harder to get a lever on. The city of South Miami ran a parking meter scam on its downtown area, I threatened as you suggest and actually did cease and desist all business with their downtown shops, but they just don't even start to care.
There may well be a bench warrant out on you in California now, not sure at what point they meshed the databases well enough to track back, but I know that South Florida has toll roads which will ID plates on rental cars (and owned cars from the 50 states) and send you your toll road bill in the mail a couple of months after you use the road. My University ticketed me for parking in the commuter lot a few weeks before I graduated - classes weren't in session and the commuter lots were supposed to be free to park in, but apparently they bent the rules to allow themselves to start ticketing a week early. I protested the ticket, was denied, ignored the bills - $20 fine, no interest, they must have sent me 20 collection attempt letters over the next 7 years, even if I had paid (which I never did) they still would have lost money. Since graduation nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, has ever asked for a direct mailed transcript - I have one showing my BS and 2 years of my Master's degree, that has been good enough for the last 35 years. Similarly, I got into a billing dispute with AT&T over a $30 bill they sent me that should have been $10 - couple of funny stories about that over the years, but in the end not paying that bill probably helped me more than it hurt, especially 6.5 years later when a credit report came back with the years-past-due on that one single $30 bill and tens of thousands of mortgage and CC paid on-time every time, somehow that looks even better than a "spotless" credit record, at least to real people.
I've taken (more than) a couple of speeding tickets to court, and you're right, the court proceedings cost them more than the fine, especially when the officer shows to defend, and if the officer doesn't show you automatically win, so it's basically a lose for them either way if you fight it - however, my last few tickets (some bogus, some not, spread maybe 4 tickets over the last 20 years), I've just paid them, considering them "road tax" payment for me to drive as I please rather than worrying about whether I might get a ticket or not. It's definitely cheaper and easier to not fight them in court, win or lose.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:55PM
https://youtu.be/U8_AYuMZn4U?t=32 [youtu.be]
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by deimios on Thursday August 16 2018, @05:57AM (1 child)
As someone working for a government (not the US) I can safely defer to Hanlon's razor, with a twist: the government employees are too incompetent to do something like this out of malice or greed.
Even so it's surprising that they acted on the information received which goes against the usual modus operandi of aloof ignorance of any and all problems until the press kicks up a fuss.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 16 2018, @11:35AM
I worked for US state government offices for a while, sometimes past experience with press-mess will actually encourage an office to get pro-active and avoid being dragged through the newspapers for the same thing again - at least until the people who personally had to answer to the press are replaced by new drones. Fortunately, lots of government employee drones stay in their jobs for decades.
🌻🌻 [google.com]