No Free Parking: These days, municipal governments need to scramble to find every spare dollar they can. Which is why the District is extending its free research program as part of a parking ticket amnesty—the program, which was set to end today, has already brought in nearly $400,000 from scofflaws taking advantage of the chance to pay up with no penalty. City officials will look up in their records to see if you owe them money until Sept. 9; they expect to bring in $6.3 million by the time it's over. +3

This Is A Robbery And A Burgeoning Trend: If hysteria over teenagers in Gallery Place wasn't enough for you, just wait. Word comes today from Montgomery County that police believe as many as three dozen teens marched into a Germantown 7-Eleven, took snacks and drinks, and left without paying—which, probably because the term "flash mob" got way too much exposure a few years ago, is known as a flash mob robbery. Expect dire predictions of riots next. -2

How Do You Mend A Broken Art: When Susan Burns slashed a Paul Gaugin painting in April, it didn't take long to figure out the underlying cause; she told police she was "from the American CIA" and had a radio in her head, and she was taken for mental health screening after being arrested. Apparently whatever treatment she got wasn't enough, as Burns was arrested again late Friday for storming into the National Gallery again and smashing Henri Matisse's "The Plumed Hat" against the wall, damaging its frame. No word on whether the CIA is still involved. -2

Hail Victory: Winning a preseason game gets an NFL team about as far toward the ultimate goal of a Super Bowl trophy as signing an official flooring partner does, which is to say, not very. But we won't complain after the Washington Redskins managed to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers Friday night in their preseason debut, despite the fairly significant handicap of playing Rex Grossman as their starting QB. (Grossman may soon be benched for John Beck, who probably also counts as a detriment on paper.) Time to be optimistic, at least until next week. +1

Friday's Needle rating: 67 Today's score: 0 Today's Needle rating: 67

Experts Weigh In: The House is setting up a fight with the White House over school vouchers for low-income D.C. students, which the Obama administration is opposing on the theory that Congress really shouldn't be deciding who goes to which schools in the District. And like all issues, the future of D.C. education policy can be easily reduced to snappy soundbites from political operatives who have no stake in and know nothing about the situation! Just ask Georgia state Sen. Judson Hill, a Republican who bills himself as "the conservative leader who delivers," and muses to Politico: "Parents should have the say in their children's education before teachers or a union. Restricting parents control and supporting unions first only reinforces the fact that the president is not on the side of children." Pithy! Thanks for contributing your generic talking points to our local issues, Sen. Hill; it only, uh, "reinforces the fact" that D.C. should be run by Washingtonians. -1

Only Voters Pay Fines: When they're not writing legislation affecting a city they like to pretend they never even set foot in, members of Congress apparently like to spend their time parking illegally and running red lights. An investigation by Roll Call finds at least $15,000 in unpaid tickets pending against cars owned or driven by lawmakers (though some, like would-be New York Mayor Anthony Weiner, paid their tab when the paper called them). City law allows members of Congress to park without paying meters wherever they like as long as they're on official business—which seems like a decent provision to revisit in our time of budgetary crises. -2

There's Something About a Tweet That's Magic: Traveling between D.C. and points north by rail often means delays of uncertain causes and lengths. But now, thanks to the power of social networking, it will mean delays of uncertain causes and lengths with 140 character rationalizations—Amtrak has launched what it's calling a "pilot program" to tweet out status updates for major problems, using the catchy Twitter handle @AmtrakNEC (for Northeast Corridor). If all goes well, maybe next they'll start sending LinkedIn requests to Acela passengers. +1

Cars to Pedestrians, Cyclists—Drop Dead: Getting around the District without the protective cushioning of at least a ton of steel, plastic, glass, and a combustion engine is increasingly dangerous. Last year, the number of people hit by cars increased 25 percent over the year before; by now, three times a day, someone meets the business end of a vehicle. (Follow @StruckDC for a grisly tally.) Officials just kicked off a new campaign aimed at pedestrian and bike safety, which will include ticketing... pedestrians and cyclists. The good news: Once they're on the ground, they're very easy to hit with a ticket. -2

Yesterday's Needle rating: 63 Today's score: -4 Today's Needle rating: 59

Sweepercam (or is it "Sweeeperscam"?) is back.

"Today, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and Department of Public Works (DPW) Director William O. Howland, Jr. kicked off the District’s 2010 street sweeping program," reads the press release. "For the second year running, street sweeping will include Sweepercam, the District’s one-of-a-kind license plate recognition system."

If you haven't heard about this snitching machine, watch out: It takes photos of cars parked where they shouldn't be during street sweeping hours, then issues tickets via mail.

Though Sweepercam is being rolled out today, it won't be ticketing until March 29. "Motorists are urged to use the five-day grace period to move their vehicles this week before Sweepercam is implemented. The fine for parking in the curb lane during street cleaning hours is $30."

But parking in a curb lane during street sweeping isn't the only way to get a ticket from Sweepercam. The expensive "all-knowing" one-of-a-kind camera sometimes captures the plate numbers of innocents, as one resident can attest. Despite the cameras fouling up at least 500 tickets last year, DPW spokesperson Nancee Lyons says there have been no changes to the program since then.

But last fall, something went wrong at his fallback parking space. A letter from the city informing him his car had been photographed there by D.C.'s newest surveillance snitch, Sweepercam, a ticketing camera hoisted to the city's street sweepers. Boese's 2002 Dodge Dakota had been parked in the way during a street cleaning. To Boese's relief, the letter was just a warning, a dry run of sorts for Sweepercam.

Boese knew the city had rigged expensive cameras equipped with license plate recognition software to some of its street sweeper fleet. What he didn't know was why he'd gotten the warning. Park Place had no signs indicating street sweeping hours—it hadn't, he recollected, for the year and half he'd been camping his vehicle there. Boese says he called the Department of Public Works (DPW) to let them know their robocop was on the fritz.

The response he got from the voice on the other end of the line was simple: We know. The system was being fouled up by human error, he claims he was told. Street sweeper drivers were forgetting to turn their Sweepercams off while chugging by areas not slated for swishing. That meant Sweepercam sometimes photographed cars that were legally parked. DPW was working on fixing the situation; sorry for the inconvenience.

Boese wasn't worried. "I figured that's what the test run was for," he says.

As fans of the McRib know, however, a little market testing doesn't always yield an infallible product. Months after its beta run, Sweepercam mailed Boese a $30 citation for parking in the same spot, and the guy was irked. "Maybe I had a bad day" he says, "but I sat down and wrote an e-mail." The angry message went to Ward 1 Councilmember–cum–Sweepercam advocate Jim Graham.

"OK, who do I contact about a parking ticket I just got in the mail? The street sweeper photographed me on Thursday. HOWEVER, its because they forgot to turn off the camera." the email reads in part."They did this to me last fall when they did the trial and mailed out the warnings. Can we not hire competent city employees?"

Ever the constituent-service monster, Graham replied, "Thanks. Let me with this email ask Dir Howland to look into this. If it happened to you in this way, it probably happened to others."

DPW Director William O. Howland Jr. looked into Boese's citation himself and found the resident was right—the ticket was bogus. "DPW will administratively void the ticket," he wrote Boese.

Graham had a pretty solid hunch, as well: At a minimum, there are hundreds of victims of Sweepercam indiscretions. Of the 22,000 tickets dispensed by Sweepercam so far, DPW says, 500 have been chucked due to "technical kinks."

In an e-mail, DPW spokesperson Nancee Lyons speaks to various scenarios for screwups: "The camera may have captured the wrong vehicle, a duplicate ticket may have been issued, the camera may have been triggered accidentally and a ticket may have been issued during a day and hours when there was no street sweeping..." As for Boese's suspicion that sweeper drivers are leaving their cameras on even when they're not cleaning, Lyons allows there have been cases where a camera "perhaps was not shut off promptly." "But the information that goes to the central computer system is reviewed before it turns to a ticket so most of those mistakes are caught."

The Sweepercam is a fabulous revenue vehicle, considering that its has dished out about $775,000 in ticket fines since March. But given its high-tech bona fides, can it be that hard to turn off?

A source at Affiliated Computer Services, the private outfit that installed the city's Sweepercams, says nah. "There's a pause/record button on the touch screen display in the cab of the sweeper," the source says. All a driver has to do is hit that button.

Howland insists his drivers aren't regularly screwing up Sweepercam use: "There have not been many complaints about the Sweepercam program. If a ticket was issued in error we try to address the issue and correct it. But there have been few errors."

So how did things turn out for Boese? After his fine first doubled, he eventually received a letter from DPW showing the bill had been zeroed out. Though that turned out well for the car owner, not everything did. Not too long ago, his parking space lost some of its appeal when the city festooned Park Place with street-cleaning signs.

Gray informed fellow councilmembers in an e-mail late yesterday that the tickets had been delivered earlier that day by a Fenty staffer.

The handover comes one day after Neil O. Albert was named city administrator. A source says Albert moved to solve the ticket problem as one of his first official acts—perhaps as a gesture of goodwill, perhaps in recognition that mayoral requests for changes to budget legislation wouldn't have a chance otherwise.

More to come Monday.

UPDATE, 1:50 P.M.: Gray tells LL he did indeed speak to Albert yesterday afternoon, and that Albert explained to him that he wanted to make settling the ticket feud his first official act as city administrator. The tickets were delivered within hours. Gray, speaking en route to catching a flight to Las Vegas for the yearly shopping centers convention, says there was no deal discussed, nothing mentioned by Albert that the mayor would be expecting in return. Not that Gray would be willing to entertain such a deal with regard to the tickets: "They're our property," he says.

Sussing out the backstory here is a tough. Why would Albert be the peacemaker here? Looks to LL like Fenty's using the fortuitous timing of Dan Tangherlini's exit to put an end to a conflict Hizzoner clearly didn't think would persist as long as it has. By having Albert serve as the peacemaker here, it gives Fenty a somewhat face-saving exit (somewhat!) by giving his old CA a bit of a kick as he goes out the door—making it seem as though he were the source of the pettiness all along. Could that be? Well, Tangherlini's played hardball with the council before, particularly on the issue of withholding executive witnesses from council hearings, but the ticket tussle has smelled like a Fenty production from the beginning.

In an oversight hearing last month, Department of Motor Vehicles Director Lucinda Babers revealed that its been a longstanding policy (15 years!) to reduce by half tickets accrued by big fleet operators in the city—folks like FedEx and UPS who regularly foul up downtown traffic by stopping in travel lanes.

Well, no more, Graham reports.

The change could mean as much as $120,000 yearly in extra revenue, Graham claims.

So what kind of folks will be pounding away on their keyboards come sale time?

Well, here's an ad that appeared on the Washington, DC Craigslist site on Dec. 19, 2008 (PostingID: 964346143), from a guy who scored, so to speak, some passes to Phish's March 8 show at Hampton Coliseum, during the last Web sale:

Me – Holder of 2 extra Phish Tickets for Sunday Hampton
You – Attractive Female 18-30I'm looking for the sweetest trade of all – ANAL – that is right – good old-fashioned anal sex for 2 Phish Tickets. We meet, we have anal and you get 2 hard copy lottery tix for Phish – easy, simple and everyone wins – I bust a nut in your a$$ and you get to go to the show.

If your interested please reply with a pic and I will be happy to send you my confirmation letter with Phish as proof.

God only knows what sorta bartering this dude would go for if he got his hands on a pair of Easter Egg Roll tickets.

God bless her. This afternoon, my sister went to the Convention Center to pick up inauguration tickets. In attempt to score a few extra (for me), she hung around and begged one inaugural ticket worker. She called multiple times. First with good news. Then with bad news. And finally with a tone of desperation admitting that she had resorted to "flirting my ass off for a ticket."

I told her she must not under any circumstances promise to meet up later with any ticket worker or, well, meet up with any employee from the Convention Center. I believe I may have shouted these directives. Unfortunately, this advice failed to anticipate that my sister would give out her cell number to an employee hoping to score tickets. Which she did. [Full disclosure: My sister is not trampy, does not regularly give out her phone number, and in fact, has a steady boyfriend].

Apparently, the Convention Center still has tickets. Rumor is you can still get tickets. The dude started texting my sister a few minutes ago:

"I should be in the area b/w 8 pm n 9 pm...if nothing else...let me buy U a drink...!!!" Then came the smiley emoticon. This was just the first text.

Here is the follow-up after getting a no response from my sister: "Waiting on word 4 a silver ticket 2...." Then another smiley emoticon. See how the dude tries to dangle the prospective of a silver inauguration ticket? Nice.

And finally, the last text (so far) after more no response from my sister: "How come...? U want 2 get in my wool coat w/ me....?" Dude ends desperate text with a sticking-tongue-out emoticon.

I feel horrible. She gave this creep her cellphone number because I needed tickets. Now he is free to send her tongue-wagging come-ons forever. Sister says she is not going to respond to the texts. "I already got two tickets," she says.

Is there a lesson learned? Yes, she says: "Don't give your phone number to some dorky Hill volunteer loser. He's not really trying to get me an inauguration ticket, he's trying to get in my pants. He's like any other douchebag not some kind Presidential Inauguration Committee volunteer."

8:22 p.m. Update: Word is they aren't giving any more tickets out at the Convention Center. They may give tickets out tomorrow morning I am told. But that just seems wrong.

Flickr photo by testspiel.de