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LEGISLATIVE BRIEFS

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<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; It&#8217;s easy to find Darren Snyder at City Hall.</p><p>His controller&#8217;s office is on the second floor, one flight up from the tax office where parking tickets are paid. That&#8217;s where Snyder would have gone to pay for a meter violation if only he was told about it last year.</p><p>Instead &#8212; in a puzzling process that dragged on for eight months &#8212; Snyder was issued a summons that he said he never received, met at his home on Reliance Drive by a state constable with a warrant for his arrest, and appeared before a district judge last week to contest the traffic citation that was withdrawn without an explanation.</p><p>&#8220;This whole thing is just bizarre,&#8221; Snyder said Wednesday.</p><p>&#8220;I never had a warrant for my arrest until I held political office,&#8221; said Snyder, 41, a Democrat in the second year of his four-year term. He said he&#8217;s not pointing fingers at anyone, and he doesn&#8217;t know if someone is trying to send him a message for something he&#8217;s done in his position to oversee how taxpayer money is spent.</p><p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t ask anybody here to take care of it. I went to court,&#8221; Snyder said.</p><p>His experience has motivated him to review how unpaid traffic fines are pursued and collected. If so much effort was put into going after him for only one ticket, what&#8217;s done for people with multiple tickets, he wondered.</p><p>&#8220;There&#8217;s definitely something wrong with the process,&#8221; Snyder said. &#8220;It&#8217;s something I&#8217;m going to look into.&#8221;</p><p>His case began Nov. 16, 2016, on West South Street where he parked his white Ford Edge. His meter expired and at 4:06 p.m. that day, Wilkes-Barre Parking Enforcement officer Bradley Desiderio issued a ticket.</p><p>But Snyder said there was no ticket tucked under a wiper blade on his windshield when he returned to his vehicle. He said it&#8217;s possible it was swiped by a Wilkes University student who didn&#8217;t want to feed the meter and put it on his own vehicle so parking enforcement would see it was already tagged and move on.</p><p>There was also no ticket among the documents in Snyder&#8217;s manila file folder at District Judge Rick Cronauer&#8217;s office in Wilkes-Barre. It contained the $159 traffic citation for docket number TR-63-17 issued Jan. 3 of this year &#8212; after the original ticket was not paid. A certified letter stamped &#8220;Unclaimed&#8221; and the notice dates of March 31 and April 5 of this year was also inside. The letter was marked returned on April 15.</p><p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t aware it was outstanding,&#8221; Snyder said. &#8220;I&#8217;m here every day. Somebody could have told me there was an outstanding ticket.&#8221;</p><p>No one did until Constable Stephen Moore of Hanover Township came to Snyder&#8217;s house May 30 with a warrant issued earlier by Cronauer. Moore collected a $50 check from Snyder as payment for the warrant and collateral for his not guilty plea to the citation. Cronauer&#8217;s office recorded the payment the next day and scheduled a summary trial for 10:30 a.m. July 19 at his office. Snyder appeared before Cronauer only to be told his case was withdrawn. He didn&#8217;t have to pay the citation and walked out.</p><p>&#8220;It just doesn&#8217;t make sense,&#8221; Snyder said.</p><p>Cronauer said his office went by the book in dealing with someone who did not respond to a citation. A warrant went out to a constable who has the authority to take the defendant into custody, obtain full payment for a guilty plea or collateral as payment for a not guilty plea.</p><p>&#8220;Our court followed the procedure,&#8221; Cronauer said.</p><p>At the time of the trial, parking enforcement stepped outside the courtroom and returned to notify him they were withdrawing the citation, Cronauer said.</p><p>There was no explanation given and Cronauer said he didn&#8217;t ask. &#8221; I don&#8217;t ever question why,&#8221; said the judge.</p><p>A call to Tom Unvarsky, Wilkes-Barre Parking Enforcement manager, was not returned Wednesday.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Snyder </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/web1_DarrenSnydermug.jpg</photo0><caption0>Snyder </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Jerry Lynott</p><p>jlynott@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Jerry Lynott at 570-991-6120 or on Twitter @TLJerryLynott.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Wilkes-Barre controller discusses ‘bizarre’ parking-ticket case