An Illinois appellate court ruled Friday that the city of Chicago unlawfully overcharged some residents who were ticketed for failing to have a vehicle sticker, which one car owner said led him to declare bankruptcy after he racked up thousands of dollars in fines, the Chicago Tribune reported. Attorney Jacie Zolna, who represents three residents in a lawsuit that led to the ruling, said the decision sets the stage for a possible class-action lawsuit that could see hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket debt come under scrutiny. Vehicle stickers are at the heart of the case. The city charges $95 annually for a passenger car sticker, with the money going toward road maintenance. Failing to display a sticker can mean a ticket. Rodney Shelton of West Humboldt Park said that a car he bought couldn’t pass the emissions test, and without that he couldn’t buy a city vehicle sticker. Even though he parked the car in a private lot, he said, the city ticketed him dozens of times for not having the sticker until the fees and penalties reached about $20,000. He had to declare bankruptcy before he could start paying it back, he said. Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned against the city’s system of fines and fees, frequently criticizing the city for balancing its budget on the backs of taxpayers by exacting regressive penalties through tickets. Within months of taking office in 2019, the mayor shepherded through the City Council a series of reforms to the city’s fines-and-fees system that ended the practice of suspending the driver’s licenses of people who haven’t paid parking tickets, reduced vehicle sticker penalties and created a six-month payment plan to give those with ticket debt more time to pay.
