I spoke to that Ruth guy some years back. He told me never to pay those tickets. I never did, and still don’t. When I get them in the mail I don’t even open them, I put RTS on the envelope and put it back in the box.
The worst that can happen may be that they eventually will not allow you to renew registration on your car. If you have a SO or maybe some other family member, perhaps you can swap cars by gifting (no sale tax on gifts — I've done it with my kid) the cars to each other and re-registering them under new names. Then do it again to start clean again.
Who knows, as the city has a problem in that the ticket is tied to the car as they have no proof of who the driver is.
Is all this worth it? In my mind F**k the bastards who are trying to steal from you — so yeah. (In my mind genius would have been one of the guys throwing the tea into Boston Harbor and one of the 1st guys bringing his flintlock to Concord.
i
mportant disclaimer: genius is not a legal type but has never paid parking tickets (although I never got any camera tickets) as the only recourse the various localities seem to have is to prevent you from re-registering the car and by the time they get around to that I've sold the car. There doesn't seem to be a credit report problem as my credit score is low 800's and I've never seen anything on my credit reports about unpaid tickets. (You guys
do check your credit reports periodically - right?)
I don't think there is even a problem with my rule of
only commit one crime at a time as these tickets are against the car and not me.
Note: that if NYC traffic enforcers ticket your car and during the ticketing they see that you have unpaid tickets they may be able to boot/tow your car. This may be legal as they aren't doing anything against you — just the car that has the tickets
Also for you guys who lease a car (for the life of me I do not see why anyone other than a business owner would lease a car) since you don't own the car there may be a problem when the lease is up.