IN COMPLIANCE: Keller’s minivan (background) sits near ODOT’s Old Town office with a valid parking sticker—this time—in the window, on June 2. IMAGE: Jarod Opperman

Karla Keller offers no apologies for racking up 474 parking tickets over the past 12 years.

“I don’t think much about it,” she says. “I pay them every month. When I do my bills, I pay them and send it off.”

Keller works in Old Town. Each workday morning these days, she parks her dark blue 2002 Dodge Caravan in a five-hour metered spot and pays the full $6.25 fee for the five hours. Sometimes she remembers to go out in the afternoon and feed the meter when her time is up, which is allowed in five-hour spots. Oftentimes, she forgets.

Keller’s astounding number of parking tickets—an average of more than three a month since 1997, the earliest records available—is even more extraordinary given Keller’s job. She’s the Oregon Department of Transportation’s regional manager for maintenance.

A 23-year ODOT employee, Keller is in charge of fixing state roads in Multnomah, Columbia, Washington, Clackamas and Hood River counties. But she never thought twice about violating city parking rules meant to keep spaces available for everybody who drives. (To see what more serious motorist rules she’s ignored, see the Rogue on this page.)

“We already don’t have adequate on-street parking for people to shop or go to one of our restaurants,” says Howard Weiner, an Old Town business owner and former head of the local neighborhood association. “This just further exacerbates an already difficult situation. And it’s almost a slap in the face coming from someone who works for the Oregon Department of Transportation.”

Nolan Mackrill, parking enforcement manager for the city, says Keller isn’t as egregious as some other violators because five-hour spaces are meant for longer-term parking. But her just-pay-the-tickets attitude represents a persistent problem.

Officials at the Portland Bureau of Transportation say parking-space hogs have long been a headache for people visiting downtown residents and businesses. Now the bureau wants to raise fines to clamp down on motorists who use the same spot all day and then simply pay the accumulated tickets.

On May 27, the Transportation Bureau asked Multnomah County Circuit Presiding Judge Jean Maurer to raise parking fines if a car racks up multiple tickets while sitting in the same spot. The request went to Maurer and not the City Council because state courts—not the city—set parking fines, hold any hearings and collect the fines, which are then split between the county and the city.

Under one new proposal, the first ticket would be $24, the same as now. But the second ticket would climb to $30 and the third to $48. (Under a parallel proposal, the city asked Maurer to raise the base fine to $34, with the second ticket $40 and the third $58.) The bureau hopes to make any changes Maurer approves effective July 1.

Cars parked in the same spot all day now receive successive $24 tickets. The city can tow the car on the third ticket and could still do so under the proposed penalty system.

The proposed changes come as the Transportation Bureau is budgeting a $1 million reduction in parking revenue for fiscal year 2008-09. Most of that money comes from meters. But with retail business sputtering and more riders on public transit, fewer people are parking downtown.

To boost income, the Transportation Bureau has proposed raising parking fees by 35 cents an hour and beginning to charge on Sunday afternoons. The bureau estimates it will bring in $4 million from parking tickets next year, up from $3.8 million this year. It’s unclear how charging repeat offenders more would affect the financial picture.

“It’s a huge incentive to move your car,” says Mackrill, “and that’s the whole idea.”