The state has two public parking lots here in downtown Lansing. When you pull into them, you have to take a ticket in order to raise the gates. When you get ready to leave, you go to a special machine that reads your ticket, takes your money and validate your ticket. Then, when you get to the exit gate, you insert your ticket and the gate goes up. Pretty neat! But, prior to this high tech approach the state had parking attendants.

The parking attendant approach was similar to the high tech system except that it was the parking attendant who took your money and activated the exit gate. Every day, Monday through Friday from 8 to 5, the same guys sat in the parking booths in their parking lot and collected money. The only exception was when they went on vacation.

When the parking attendants went on vacation, some one would have to fill in for the parking attendants. And an interesting thing would happen. Parking revenues would increase by 30%. The state was at a loss as to why the revenue had such a dramatic increase and assumed that there were 30% more people using the parking lots during this period.

Finally, after several years, they got suspicious that maybe the parking attendants were stealing money from the parking coffers. But, the state did not have a way to audit the financial activities of the parking lots. And, since the state had no way of knowing how much money was really collected each day, they couldn’t prove that theft was taking place.

Finally, the parking attendants were confronted and told that the state had evidence of their theft. They were lying, of course, but the attendants didn’t know that. They were given a choice of an early retirement or going to court. They retired.

Rather than go to court, the state has a habit of offering early retirements. Not only do they offer early retirements, sometimes they even throw in a bonus as an added incentive. So, it goes something like this “You can go to jail or retire early. And if you retire early, we will give you a $10,000 up front bonus plus add 10 years to your pension longevity.”

So, not only did the guys pocket about $100 a day from the parking booth, they also walked away free with full medical, a $10,000 up front bonus and an additional $15,000 a year from their pension. And who said that crime doesn’t pay.