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So instead of something like proportional fines related to the value of the properties, you’ve fucked over the working class for violations that they didn’t commit, didn’t know about, and likely had no control over? Do you have any idea what an unexpected $500, $1000, or $1500 bill can do to a family that is struggling? Are these fines even legal? What types of violations by the rich are the working class being made to pay for? Do you also send warnings to the workers before taking their money, or do the owners get a warning and you just hope they tell everyone else? I find this little story completely abhorrent and I hope some of these workers sue your organization and get their money back.
The people we're talking about have billions and we can only legally charge them a few thousand. We can't cut off the money spigot, so we cut off the supply of workers willing to work for them.
And the workers that get fined are the ones still performing the work after we've issued a verbal and written stop-work order and cited the owners. And it's not like we just put something in the mail - we discover the work by driving by, seeing the workers on site, and speaking with them directly and telling them to stop. Our code enforcement people don't cite the individual workers until their third trip to the site in which they're told to stop. Hell - if they stopped when we first asked we wouldn't even know who to cite if we wanted.
Most of the time, they stop without being cited and work with us on permitting and remediation. We end up having to go after the contractors for violation of a SWO about 1% of the time (though we'll also cite them for other things like wrenching through public utilities in the ROW more often). And in those cases it's almost always the contractors who lie and either tell the owners a permit isn't needed or that they already have one. The last time we did it they had actually printed out a forged permit placard.
And that 1% that repeatedly refuses to follow the rules gets to go to court and explain their side to the judge, where the reality is they'll probably have the daily fine dismissed and only pay the initial $500 or whatever if they start to cooperate.
It's incredibly frustrating how everyone thinks the government shoild just steal roll over people on these things. These things are done this way because sometimes the fine is wrong.
Everyone wants heavy immediate enforcement until they are the target and enforcement notice.
Our goal is compliance, not enforcement. The only people we throw the book at early are repeat offenders we've already suspended from pulling permits for repeat violations or anyone who tries to meet us with a lawyer.
We learned long ago that you can't give a micrometer in this town to rich people who try to intimidate you with a lawyer. Other cities fold under that pressure, but with everyone in the city being in the top 0.1% there's no way we can let lawyers intimidate us.
We go to court a few times a year, and our lawyers are way meaner than we are and haven't lost a case since I've been with the city.
This happens all the time even on the federal level. My company just ate a several thousand $ fine because we were working on a site where the plumbers didn't mark an open pit while plumbing a mop sink. We were the HVAC contractors working on the roof. We were not even working in the same area and had no way of knowing what the plumbers were doing. OSHA didn't care. Every company who was working the job got hit with a fine for continuing work on an unsafe site. It's complete bullshit but, at the same time, everyone onsite is going to think twice about ever working with those plumbers again. So even though it's complete and utter shit, it is probably the most effective tool at their disposal with current laws.
You can tell the trully advanced countries from the backwards ones by them having fines which are proportional to income/wealth rather than fixed.
The only ones I know which are the former are in Scandinavia.
The UK theoretically also has that for Court fines (it's in the conviction guidance, which means it's optional), but in practice not really.
You think a municipality can issue proportional fines just because it wants to? They don't write the laws.