Nope, parent poster said explicitly "Money from auction goes in pool and split between everyone who doesnt park."
I'd like to see the same kind of idea with moving violations. It's wronging the communities they're cited in; it should go back to us, directly. Not to some enforcement arm that buys MRAPS and shit.
It does.
There is a reasonable argument that such fees should go to the general fund for the locality, not to some specific department like law enforcement (because of incentives).
But I do not think there is a reasonable argument that the money should "go back to us, directly" rather than going to the local government. I mean, if you REALLY wanted your tax bill to come with two extra lines on it:
> Refund due to collections from legal enforcement: $ -54.36
> Additional charges for operating costs: $ 54.36
...but I HOPE you are bright enough to realize that the net difference between showing these lines on the tax bill and not showing them is meaningless and that there is little benefit to bothering to list it that way.
The problem is when government is opaque, we get things like "Govt services are horrible, blablabla". Whereas if funding wasn't in omnibus bills and covered up, we could see "Yes, their performance is low cause they are understaffed and working on a shoestring budget. They couldn't even afford office supplies."
I mean seriously, we value provenance in software with tools like Git. Why not Government and expenditure calculations? I certainly see a value there, regardless the party.
Pooling all revenue, from both taxes and fines, would make budgeting more complex as the tax rate would need to fluctuate with the expectation of fines, including the ones from new legislation. Any new fine legislation would thus be a tax bill by side-effect.