Remember this funny little story, back in 2007?
Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, according to the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department.
Of those tickets, he paid only two while he was a student and paid them late, said Susan Clippinger, the office’s director.
In January, about when the Globe began asking local officials about Obama’s time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets.
On Jan. 26, the remaining $375 in fines and fees were paid by credit card using the city’s website, Clippinger said. She said she didn’t know who paid them.
The article quotes a city spokesman for Somerville (where Obama lived while attending Harvard) saying that the paid the city $73 in excise taxes and $45 in late penalties for parking in a bus stop in 1990 and in a street-sweeping zone in 1991, and the city spokesman says Obama “had no idea he had outstanding charges.”
All in all, there are much worse sins for a presidential candidate than having a pile of unpaid parking tickets. And the candidate can point out that by putting him in the White House, he’ll no longer be menacing Cambridge bus stops, street sweepers, and resident-only zones.
But here’s the thing: Barack Obama is a member of the state bar of Illinois, and was admitted in December 1991. The application to the bar requires aspiring lawyers to disclose just about any run-in with the law on both the “Character and Fitness Questionnaire” and the “Illinois State Police Form.”
For example, Question 33 of the State Police Form is, “Do you have outstanding parking violations?”
And then there’s Question 35: “Do you understand that after this Additional Questionnaire is filed, you will have a continuing reporting obligation to notify the Board of Admissions of any changes or additions to the information provided in your application? This includes, but is not limited to, address changes, employment changes, disciplinary actions (professional, educational, employment or other), arrests, criminal charges, becoming a party to litigation, overdue and defaulted credit and loan accounts, filing for relief under federal bankruptcy laws, failure to comply with state or federal tax laws, and traffic violations, including any parking tickets that are not paid upon receipt.”
(Questions 51 and 55 on the Character and Fitness Questionnaire are essentially the same. It is theoretically possible that the forms Obama filled out back in the early 1990s didn’t have these questions, although I’m not sure why the question wouldn’t appear on earlier forms… UPDATE: A reader who applied to the Illinois Bar in 1986 says the question was on the application then, too.)
Presumably, asked whether he had outstanding parking violations, Obama said no; you figure if he knew about them, he would have paid them. (Although are we to believe Obama forgot about 17 tickets stuck under his windshield wiper over three years? The wind blew them all away before he returned to his car?) Whether that’s worth worrying about is up to the Illinois State Bar Association. But a more interesting question would be whether Obama (or someone on his staff) updated the State Bar about the parking tickets once they were paid in 2007. After all, there is that “continuing reporting obligation to notify the Board of Admissions of any changes or additions to the information provided in your application.” Or does the lawyer’s reporting obligation cease if the law license becomes inactive, as Obama’s did in 2002?
Inevitably, some fan of Obama out there will look at this post and ask, “why is that stupid Jim trying to distract us from the important issues by asking about Obama’s answer on the state bar association’s application about parking tickets?” I would note that the Illinois State Bar Association feels that an individual’s diligence with even minor violations of the law like parking tickets is significant enough to ask a separate question about it. Take it up with them.