What can Brown do for you? It can fatten your city's coffers if you live in San Francisco:
International courier UPS receives an average of more than one San Francisco parking ticket every hour, giving the company the unenviable distinction of being the city's No. 1 parking violator.
Last year, United Parcel Service paid $673,334 in fines for 11,788 tickets -- an average of one ticket every 45 minutes throughout the year.
The company is not alone. Eighteen companies have special accounts with the city to pay off parking tickets in bulk. Together, they racked up 27,395 tickets and paid more than $1.5 million in fines for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
McMillan Electric Co. contributed $74,375 toward the total. The family-owned San Francisco firm, which does most of its business downtown, received 1,497 tickets over the year.
"It's a business decision,'' company president Pat McMillan said. "Is it cheaper to pay the ticket, or is it cheaper to pay the guys working for me to spend time looking for a legal parking space?"
McMillan pays his workers about $80 an hour and said risking a parking ticket often wins out. "I don't like it, but we've got a job to do, and we have to get our guys in there to work."
What a cool example of decision-making under uncertainty, cost-minimization, and law and economics.