PITTSBURGH -- The following is a transcript of a report by Team 4 investigator Jim Parsons that first aired Feb. 12, 2007, on WTAE Channel 4 Action News at 5 p.m.

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Parking in Pittsburgh is enough to ruin anyone's day, especially when you find a ticket on your windshield. But a Team 4 Investigation found thousands of tickets every year are getting tossed out.

About 250,000 drivers got parking tickets in Pittsburgh last year and shelled out $7.5 million, but 12,000 of those tickets got voided.

Team 4's investigation discovered that the car with more voided tickets than any other belonged to a guy whose job is to hand out parking tickets.

Brookline native Ray Marcione gets parking tickets in his Toyota Camry. He got 29 tickets to be exact between September 2005 and December 2006.

Most of the violations were for parking in prohibited spots.

Maricone's total in fines topped $1,000, but he didn't have to pay a dime because the Pittsburgh Parking Authority voided every one of his 29 tickets, which is where he works as a parking enforcement officer.

WTAE Channel 4 Action News investigative reporter Jim Parsons dug a little deeper.

Parsons: "Ray Marcione?"

Maricone: "Yeah?"

Parsons: "Jim Parsons from Channel 4. How are you doing?"

Maricone: "Good."

Parsons: "I want to ask you a question. You work for the Parking Authority, right?"

Maricone: "Yes sir."

Parsons: "You have a lot of voided tickets."

But Maricone and his boss, David Onorato, did not have any answers to Team 4's questions about Maricone's voided tickets.

Parsons: "Is there any explanation you can think of for that?"

Onorato: "No."

Parsons: "How is that happening?"

Onorato: "I will look into it and find out how it's happening."

It's happening for other parking authority officers, as well.

Dana Murphy hands out parking tickets in Oakland, but she's also received tickets on her personal car, a white Hyundai.

Six of Murphy's tickets were voided last year, including three on the street where she lives in Bloomfield.

Linda Hurney has been writing tickets to Pittsburgh parkers since 1995, but on Hurney's personal vehicle, a GMC Envoy, 18 parking tickets were voided in a 14-month period, all of them on or near the 1200 block of Carson Street, where her family owns a business.

In a confrontation between Parsons and Hurney, Parsons asked her how all of her tickets got voided.

Word of the situation got back to Onorato, because he knew all about Hurney's voided tickets when Team 4 asked him about it.

Onorato: "They shouldn't have been voided."

Parsons: "Anybody get fired over this?"

Onorato: "No."

Onorato said six of Hurney's fellow meter maids improperly voided her parking tickets without her knowledge, he claims.

Onorato: "I think the employees have to be held to a higher standard when it comes to voids. That message has been sent to them."

Parsons: "How? You didn't suspend anybody did you?"

Onorato: "The necessary discipline was taken.

Parsons: But you haven't said what that is."

Onorato: "Correct."

Onorato blamed Hurney's fellow officers for improperly voiding her tickets, but only managers have the ability to issue voids.

Onorato: "They have to bring them in, and they're voided out of the system the next day."

Parsons: "Well who has the authority to do that?"

Onorato: "The management staff."

Onorato said there are several legitimate reasons for voiding parking tickets, including broken meters and forgetting to display a valid parking permit.

"If they have a legitimate permit, we'll void the ticket out," said Onorato.

Missing permits are the reason the parking authority voided tickets last year for two city councilmen, Jeff Koch and President Doug Shields.

Koch's pickup truck had two tickets voided, and Shield's Chevrolet sedan four tickets. Council members get permits that allow them to park for free citywide.

The same goes for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl who got a ticket in Squirrel Hill for illegal parking one week after becoming mayor.

"He didn't have the permit yet during that time," said Onorato. "It wasn't an oversight on everyone issuing him a permit until the ticket was issued. Then it came to our attention and so we did void that ticket out."

Who has to pay their ticket and who doesn't?

The Parking Authority gets to make those kinds of decisions, but two years ago they couldn't.

That's when Pittsburgh's traffic court was eliminated and the Parking Authority took control of the ticket process from start to finish, effectively acting as cop, judge and jury.

The authority now oversees the new Pittsburgh Parking Court and hires retired district judges as independent contractors.

Vic Musgrove would rather not take his chances in court. The hair salon owner parks his Jeep Grand Cherokee every day on Forbes near Smithfield. He said he gets a lot of tickets.

Last year, Musgrove successfully convinced the Parking Authority to void 19 of his tickets before they got to court.

He said with the Parking Authority, you win some and you lose some.

"You just got to go down and try to fight," said Musgrove. "Sometimes they'll give you a break. Sometimes they won't."

But the breaks seem to come more often for those who work there, which doesn't sit well with a guy who just paid a $45 parking ticket.

"I go to work every day like they do, and I still got to pay a fine, and they don't, because they work there," said Craig Brain. "That's not right."

Onorato said he would find out how Maricone had 29 tickets voided on his personal car, but Onorato has not answered Team 4's follow-up questions about that.

Also, Team 4 asked for documentation to explain the reasons for those 12,000 voided tickets last year, but never got it.

The Parking Authority claimed it has a long-standing policy of not writing parking tickets to the media when they're in marked news cars, however, after Team 4 interviewed Onorato for this story, we found a parking ticket on our car.

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