Opinion 25-153

November 6, 2025

Digest: On these facts, where a village has contracted with a third-party vendor to manage alleged parking ticket violations in the vendor’s software platform as specified herein:
(1) If the village maintains complete administrative control over parking tickets in the vendor’s platform, the justice court may not access or use the vendor’s online portal or software platform, but may do so if the village access is changed to “read only.”

(2) Once the village access is changed to “read only,” the justice court may also receive training from the vendor on the parking software platform.
(3) As a matter of ethics, a judge must not certify the “truth and completeness” of a month-end report the judge in fact knows or believes to be incorrect. Questions about what the judge can or must do after declining to certify an incorrect or incomplete month-end report involve legal and/or administrative issues we cannot address.

Rules: Judiciary Law § 212(2)(l); 22 NYCRR 100.0(S); 100.1; 100.2(A); 100.3(A); 100.3(C)(1)-(2); 101.1; Opinions 24-183; 24-124; 24-51; 10-93; 1983 Ops St Comp No. 83-174.

Opinion:

The inquiring town justices provide all court services to the village(s) within the town, and thus have jurisdiction over village parking tickets. As relevant here, a village within the town contracts directly with a for-profit company (the vendor) to manage village parking tickets on its parking enforcement software platform. The vendor provides scanning equipment to the village police, who then upload “a copy of the actual parking ticket, with a photo of the alleged violation (ie., lapsed registration sticker, expired meter)” to the vendor’s system for storage and reporting purposes. Any uploaded tickets are then downloaded by the court and processed. A defendant who does not wish to contest the ticket in court may pay the fine either online or in-person. The vendor collects payments online, either directly or through subcontractors, and remits them to the court. The court accepts in-person payments, records payment of fines through the vendor’s software platform, and “presides over any trials.” As described, the vendor’s platform does not shift any prosecutorial functions to the court nor usurp the court’s adjudicative role or prerogatives. However, while the village has “voluntarily” agreed “to ‘read only’ access to the programs,” the judges note that the village nonetheless retains the apparent legal and contractual right to “at any time access, change or control the dispositions and reports of dispositions of tickets in the court’s control.” In addition, court staff have investigated and identified certain errors and inaccuracies in the vendor’s reporting system. For example, in one instance, the system misidentified a payment as being made in cash to the court, when the funds were collected online by the vendor. In another, after a defendant’s personal check failed to clear, the system incorrectly “showed revenue of $240 for a $100 ticket.” In a third instance, as a result of a subcontractor’s “temporary outage,” two defendants’ accounts were credited without notifying the court.[1] As a result, the inquiring judges “have been unable to certify in good conscience as to the ‘truth and completeness’ of [statutorily required] month-end reports” for several months. The village has “demanded payment” and suggests that court staff should undergo “additional training.” The judges now ask three questions, which we will describe and address individually below.

A judge must uphold the judiciary’s integrity, impartiality, and independence (see 22 NYCRR 100.1; 100.2[A]; 100.0[S] [“An ‘independent’ judiciary is one free of outside influences or control.”]). A judge’s judicial duties take precedence over all the judge’s other activities and include all the duties of a judge’s office prescribed by law (see 22 NYCRR 100.3[A]). In performing judicial duties, a judge must “diligently discharge” his/her administrative responsibilities (22 NYCRR 100.3[C][1]) and must “require staff, court officials and others subject to the judge’s direction and control to observe the standards of fidelity and diligence that apply to the judge” (22 NYCRR 100.3[C][2]).

1. Administrative Control of Parking Tickets

The judges first ask whether the court is permitted to operate under a structure where the village, as contracting party, maintains “administrative control over parking tickets in their vendor’s platform even after those tickets have been downloaded and are within the control” of the justice court.

The New York State Comptroller has stated that a town justice is personally responsible for monies that the justice court receives and must therefore have direct supervision and control over the receipt and handling of such money (see Opinion 24-51, citing 1983 Ops St. Comp No. 83-174). The monies must also be segregated, deposited, and paid to the State Comptroller by certain deadlines pursuant to statutory requirements (see Opinion 10-93). It appears that many elements of this overall statutory scheme, including the monthly reporting requirements, are intended to “provide centralized accounting for the fines, penalties, forfeitures, and fees collected by the town and village justice courts throughout New York State” (Office of the State Comptroller, Justice Court Fund, Handbook for Town and Village Justices and Court Clerks, at 7).

On the facts described, we understand that the inquiring judges are expected to work with the third-party vendor’s software platform in tracking and reconciling the funds received by the court on village parking tickets. Indeed, the judges have provided examples of three instances where court staff have had to identify, investigate, and resolve discrepancies introduced by the software platform or its payment processing subcontractors.

In light of the judges’ statutory responsibilities to account for the funds entrusted to them, we conclude that the village’s current power to “at any time access, change or control the dispositions and reports of dispositions of tickets in the court’s control” creates at the very least an appearance of impropriety and may undermine judicial independence. Accordingly, from an ethical perspective, the judges should not participate in this parking enforcement software platform as long as the village maintains administrative control over parking tickets in the vendor’s platform, even after the tickets have been downloaded to the control of the justice court.

Conversely, we conclude that limiting the village to “read only” access, so that non-court personnel cannot even inadvertently interfere with any accounting, auditing or reconciliation processes that may need to be undertaken, will satisfy this impediment.

2. Involvement of Third-Party Vendor

The judges also ask if they and their court staff may “receive training from a for-profit company on their parking software platform, and use such software platform, where a copy of the actual parking ticket, with a photo of the alleged violation (ie., lapsed registration sticker, expired meter), is downloaded.”

In Opinion 24-124, we said that a justice court may not access or use an online portal created by a for-profit vendor to prosecute and/or adjudicate VTL § 1174-a cases, nor participate in the vendor’s training to implement the program. However, we subsequently reached a different conclusion on the specific implementation described in another county (see Opinion 24-183). In the latter opinion, we described the key differences in implementation as follows (id. [citations omitted]):

As we advised in Opinion 24-124, a judge may not participate in a program … where a vendor uploads an “electronic evidence package,” sets the court date and time for the hearing and requires that the judge or court clerk access the vendor’s online portal to learn of a scheduled hearing, conduct such hearing and then report the court’s findings through that same portal. From an ethical perspective, we said this arrangement impermissibly intrudes upon the independence of the judiciary. Indeed, we have also advised that “the actual procurement of evidence sought or needed by a party in support of or opposition to a disputed claim, goes beyond the judge’s role as a neutral arbiter.” Likewise, we have also said a judge may not delegate judicial decision-making.

Here, as the District Attorney (rather than the court) will prosecute the tickets …, and the court (rather than the vendor) will set a hearing date, we see no impermissible intrusion upon the independence of the judiciary regarding the scheduling and conducting of hearings. Thus, assuming the VTL § 1174-a proceeding is lawfully commenced, we see no ethical impropriety in the described procedure as implemented by the county.

In our view, the present inquiry is closer to Opinion 24-183 than Opinion 24-124. Here, the inquiring justices recognize that if a defendant wishes to contest a parking violation, the court “presides over any trials.” Such trials must of course be conducted pursuant to standard court procedures. Thus, it remains the prosecutor’s responsibility to introduce admissible evidence at trial, no matter what photos or other alleged supporting documentation may have been uploaded or downloaded on the vendor’s software system (cf. Opinion 24-183). Likewise, it will remain the court’s responsibility to schedule and conduct the hearing according to applicable law after downloading the tickets.

The implementation addressed in Opinion 24-183 did not require the judge or court personnel to access the vendor’s portal and thus did not require participation in training to use the system. For guidance on this aspect, we must look back to Opinion 24-124. Significantly, the specific school bus stop arm monitoring program we found impermissible in that opinion was “run by a private for-profit vendor in cooperation with the police services division of the county’s department of emergency services” (Opinion 24-124 [emphasis added]). Reviewing prior opinions, we noted that judges may not participate in training programs where the overall purpose and context impermissibly suggest “it is a one sided, law enforcement program designed to ‘maximize enforcement’ or enhance conviction rates” (id.). Under the circumstances presented in Opinion 24-124, where the vendor was “running the program in consultation with a quasi-law enforcement agency that presumably has an interest in enforcing and collecting civil penalties,” we concluded that participation in the training would create an appearance of impropriety (id.).

Here, it seems that court personnel would access the system to (a) download the tickets and related information into the court’s control, (b) access or enter information about payments that have been made on outstanding tickets, and/or (c) run reports. In our view, those activities do not become impermissible merely because the village has contracted with a for-profit vendor to provide a software platform to maintain its parking ticket records.

In essence, this training program does not seek to maximize enforcement or enhance conviction rates but to familiarize court personnel with the record-keeping system. That does not create an appearance of impropriety precluding their participation. Thus, once the village access is changed to “read only,” we conclude the judges and/or court personnel may receive training from the vendor to familiarize them with the parking software platform.

3. Certification of Erroneous Month-End Reports

Finally, the judges ask if they may certify month-end reports when the court has observed reporting errors generated by the parking enforcement software program. It is clear from the inquiry that they consider these inaccuracies to be significant rather than insubstantial or merely technical in nature.

As a matter of ethics, a judge must not certify the “truth and completeness” of a month-end report that the judge in fact knows or believes to be incorrect.

Questions about what a judge can or must do after declining to certify an incorrect/incomplete month-end report involve legal and/or administrative issues we cannot address (see generally Judiciary Law § 212[2][l]; 22 NYCRR 101.1). But as a general principle, assuming it is possible to correct the errors and omissions, we certainly see no ethical objection to certifying an amended report.

[1] The vendor was unaware of the outage and its effect, and unhelpfully referred court staff to the subcontractor, who referred court staff back to the vendor.