Downright Sneaky

Parked on the street, and come back to your car to find an expired meter ticket?

Happens every day. Of course, it isn't every day that the meter was put up after you parked.

In Chicago, parking meters don't just expire. They can suddenly appear out of nowhere, like people who have been dead for years showing up at the polls on Election Day.That's the only reason--illogical and unfair as it is--that Chicago police would have slapped drivers with parking tickets for failing to feed meters when there were no meters to be fed when the cars were parked.

Motorists who parked downtown on a stretch of Illinois Street last week fell unsuspectingly into a parking-ticket trap. It is a trick Getting Around had not seen before, but one that we are happy to expose and terminate.Among the drivers scammed was Chicago attorney Vince Tessitore, who at first felt lucky on Tuesday night to find a legal, meterless space to park his Jeep Cherokee on the north side of Illinois just west of LaSalle Street. But when a friend went to the spot to retrieve Tessitore's car about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, a parking meter had been installed where the day before there was no meter.And a parking ticket was left on the windshield.

Not as bad as condemning your house for private development I guess. The city claimed that it would cancel all the tickets.