Andy Marlette

News Journal Cartoonist

This land is your land, this land is my land… until you get a ticket for parking on it.

Woody Guthrie would be no fan of the Downtown Improvement Board, the government-ish agency who enforces commandments set forth on parking signage in downtown Pensacola. In original versions of Guthrie's ubiquitous folk song (not the versions they teach you in kindergarten), he sang about defying a "no tresspassin'" sign. Woody's logic was that the other side of the sign "didn't say nothin'" and "that side was made for you and me."

But be warned ramblin' rabble-rousers: Downtown parking is not that simple.

I tried to figure it out in light of news that the DIB is changing the rules to the parking game. Longer enforcement hours. Higher fines. Whatever. I prefer the bike over the pick-up truck for scooting around downtown. It's generally faster, funner and I get to park free at all those candy-colored bicycle racks that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.

Still, when rules, fines and penalties pop up, my inner-Guthrie takes a swig of rye whiskey and wants to question authority. So I called Ron Butlin, executive director of the DIB.

In this case, it's hard to get too fired up because Butlin and the DIB are actually real sweethearts about the whole thing — no towing, no tire boots. On a scale of authoritative iron-fistedness, they're closer to Tibetan monks than Obama's IRS agents. Which sort of gets to the non-legal opinion I've heard for years — that a DIB ticket doesn't have any real legal authority.

And according to Butlin, that's sort of true. He said a parking ticket is neither "a civil nor a criminal penalty. There's no warrant or police record involved." No points on your license. The courts don't even handle the fines.

Even Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons confirmed that PPD has no role in any of it. To borrow a phrase from Youtube, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

So shred that ticket, right? Not so fast. If you do have unpaid parking tickets, the next time you try to register your vehicle, you shan't be able to. The free parking party ends at Janet Holley's house.

So to all the kids who trash their tickets after leaving mom's car overnight at Sluggo's — Momma's going to find out eventually from the tax collector.

How a crucial, state-issued service like tag renewal can be withheld to enforce a non-civil, non-criminal citation like a DIB parking ticket (issued by a third party, by the way) is beyond me. But then again, I'm not as smart as I look.

I'd love to call for Guthrie-esque civil disobedience of the DIB's rules, but Dylan may have more to offer about downtown Pensacola. Don't follow leaders. But watch the parking meters.