Wait...wait...don’t tell me

As the old saying goes, two wrongs don’t make a right. This is especially the case when one of those ‘wrongs’ happens to be a lawyer named Ron Kim. But in the process of doing something patently wrong, the city’s overzealous half-baked Public Safety commissioner may have actually done something right.

Kim’s most recent political flap started Monday morning, when either he or one of his minions made note of an astronomical parking ticket collection amassed by socialite-in-training Jennifer Wait. The glib reference was posted anonymously and off topic on a neighboring blog as a dig aimed at Jeffrey Wait, the young woman’s father and one of two Democratic candidates for City Court judge.

“[The] deficit would be no problem if Jeff Wait's scofflaw daughter would just pay the fines on all the parking tickets she’s accumulated in Saratoga Springs,” the anonymous poster wrote Monday evening. “Instead, she’s sent her father to embarrass himself by begging anyone who'll listen in City Hall to give her a sweetheart discount.”

The next morning, Kim got on the horn to the newspapers and elaborated on what would have been otherwise considered a political eddy created by the ongoing implosion of the city Democrats. Apparently, the younger Wait amassed $1,170 worth of fines while parking her vehicle along North Broadway over the past two years. The total was enough to put her name on a list of 180 scofflaws Kim ordered towed in an attempt to collect more than $150,000 worth of outstanding fines.

Sure enough, Wait’s car was towed and impounded until the city fines could be settled. And naturally, she asked her father to intercede on her behalf. Jeffrey Wait contacted the city attorney and asked for a plea deal. In turn, the attorney contacted Kim, who indigently put his foot down on top of any such deal. He said the father and daughter would need to appear in court, so that a city judge could mete out justice.

“…Here’s this guy running for City Court judge and he's asking for special consideration for his daughter,” he told the Post Star Wednesday. “To call me and blatantly say, ‘what can you do for me?’ I find disturbing.”

This is where Kim was inadvertently right. The city certainly had the upper hand in the case, seeing as though Wait’s tickets were far past delinquent and her car collecting impound fees. After 10 days impounded, the fees to recover the car alone would have been more than the parking tickets. So it really made no sense for the city to bargain, especially with someone who could more than afford the cost of the tickets. Trying a negotiating tactic like this in Albany after a tow is likely to garner more laughs than a slow leaking tank of nitrous.

The city ended up capitulating in court and the Waits walked away paying less than half the original fine total. While those paying the full outrageous amount of city parking tickets might find this slightly troubling, it does show a sense of compassion for city residents, even if they happen to roll with the wealthy. It should be noted that this compassion didn’t extend to the three other scofflaws snared under Kim directive, who paid an average of $1,061 in fines.

But all of Kim’s rightful actions end here. Were it not for his announcement to the press, the parking issue never would have made it beyond the halls of justice. Like most parking offenders, the Waits would have paid their fines to the city and been done with the issue. After all, parking illegally is a violation and not one subject to the same public scrutiny as a crime against the public good.

Kim’s faction of the party saw a clear chance to gain some political traction with the Democratic primary just a few months ahead. See, Wait is the preferred candidate of Klotzian Democrats; a faction some now refer to as the so-called Boyd and McTygue supporters. His challenger, James Montagnino, is allegedly the product of the Keehn splinter, of which Kim is a card-carrying member.

As the less fickle may recall, the city Dems endorsed Wait over the objections of the splinter faction. Right around this time, several newspapers published reports about Montagnino, a former referee in Westchester County matrimonial court, who was reassigned by the state court system after complaints were lodged against him in 2006.

In wake of this report, it’s easy to see why Kim’s faction would want to dig up dirt on Wait. And Kim’s assertion that he brought the issue into the public eye ‘because he didn't want to be accused of cronyism for a fellow Democrat’ is flat out ludicrous. When it comes down to brass tacks, he’s simply furthering the same politics of destruction that have brought the party to its knees lately.