Erie County auditors examining the odd patchwork of parking for county employees downtown found that some workers have devised a way to beat the system and park free.

They create an "Official Business" placard, post it on the dashboard and park their personal vehicles wherever they wish.

The city's Parking Enforcement Bureau admits it doesn't ticket those vehicles when parked in proximity to important county buildings, even when the placard is on private cars that don't move throughout the day.

"If you can get a good laser printer, put "official business' on it, and put the county seal on it, you can pretty much park wherever you want," County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said Wednesday, after his auditors completed a review of parking in and around the county- government complex.

He said that his auditors in recent months found official-business placards on privately owned cars parked around the Erie County Holding Center, Rath County Office Building and Old County Hall.

They also found no apparent connection to official business, aside from the fact the owners work for the county or some government agency.

Buffalo's parking enforcers have a no-nonsense reputation. The city will throw people in jail for neglected tickets, as Linda C. Arthur of Evans found out when she spent a December weekend in the Holding Center because of an unpaid $15 fine on a downtown ticket.

But Parking Enforcement Director Leonard Sciolino said he defers to the Sheriff's Office to enforce the parking law around the Holding Center complex and 134 W. Eagle St., which contains sheriff's offices. And he defers to the sheriff's authority around much of the county complex.

Sheriff's employees, however, were among those using official-business placards to park their personal vehicles for free, the auditors said.

"We allow the county sheriff's department to enforce the law around their own buildings. And that has been a help to us," Sciolino said Wednesday. He added that if a deputy tells one of his parking enforcers to ignore some cars "my person moves on."

Sciolino emphasized that his department does not issue official-business placards, nor does it sanction placards issued by any agency.

Poloncarz agrees. He says there are no rules.

"Simply put — anyone may create their own placard and park downtown," his report said. "Getting a parking ticket while displaying a placard is a function of how generous Parking Enforcement employees feel at that particular moment."

Sheriff Timothy B. Howard acknowledged that his deputies enforce parking around the sheriff's downtown facilities.

"Any car parked around this building, our personnel need to know why the car is here," said Howard, speaking from his office at 10 Delaware Ave. "I have no doubt that some of our employees are parking around our building for a short period of time. Depending on the time of day, we find that to be acceptable."

Poloncarz had set out to examine the way the county assigns its coveted free parking in county-controlled lots or the Rath Building garage. He and his auditors said they found a helter-skelter system of informal agreements that go back years, but they could find no real policy or guidelines.

It seems to be based on who you know, Poloncarz said, and the best person to know is the county executive … whichever one was in power.

"The county executive," he said, "controls access to almost all parking facilities."

For those employees working in the Rath Building, the desired spots are the approximately 100 in the building's garage. The district attorney, comptroller and county executive get one. The county clerk and sheriff park elsewhere.

All 15 lawmakers get one. The Legislature's staff members use them when legislators do not. Many of the other spaces are commanded by the county executive's appointees. The employees of his top-floor suite all get spaces, too — 11 total, according to the report.

The county executive's office responded Wednesday by accusing the comptroller of again focusing on tedium.

"Once again, Erie County taxpayers have been shortchanged by an unqualified comptroller more focused on politics than on protecting taxpayers," spokesman Grant Loomis said. "For the last five months, the comptroller has spent an undisclosed amount of manpower and taxpayer resources on a political fishing expedition that will not save one penny of taxpayer funds.

"Chicken Little" — as Collins has dubbed Poloncarz — "has now become Inspector Gadget," Loomis said.

Poloncarz said the county should, among other things, devise a policy for the fair award of free parking to county employees, especially when considering that hundreds of county workers pay to park downtown. He said he would be willing to pay for his spot in the Rath Building as part of a more equitable system.

The parking review has its roots in an April dust-up between Poloncarz and Collins. Poloncarz at the time accused the county executive of misusing taxpayer dollars on a refrigerator for his office suite — a type of purchase long considered out of bounds in County Hall.

The county executive's staff responded by telling two of the comptroller's deputies they could no longer park in the Rath Building garage. That's when Poloncarz unleashed his auditors. They ran license plates with the state Department of Motor Vehicles to determine who parked where.

Collins' staff in April said they kicked the comptroller's deputies out of their parking spaces because they wanted to make room for an "employee of the month" spot and to create more room for Rath Building visitors. It wasn't payback for the refrigerator matter, they said. But that employee-of-the-month spot has yet to be set up.

Loomis on Wednesday said the county executive's "Reward and Recognition" program, which would install an employee of the month, is still being developed as part of the ongoing "Culture Change" initiative.

Copyright 2009, The Buffalo News