Next time maybe he should just litter?

by Walter Olson on May 27, 2004

Andy Chasin tossed a FedEx airbill — just the one piece of paper — in a trash receptacle near his District of Columbia home. Thirteen days later, he was served with a $35 ticket from the city’s Department of Public Works charging him with Improper Use of Public Litter Receptacles: statute 24 DCMR 1009.1 provides that “Public wastepaper boxes shall not be used for the disposal of refuse incidental to the conduct of a household, store, or other place of business. …” Official inspectors, it turns out, rummage through the litter in search of items that should have been disposed of in home or office trash. “I tell people all the time: Don’t put anything with your name on it in a public trash can,” says Mary Myers, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Works. (Marc Fisher, “When It Comes To Waste, D.C. Is Priceless”, Washington Post, Mar. 24).

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1 Country Keepers by Gary Petersen 05.27.04 at 1:48 am

Government at Work

Government at Work For a district whose budget troubles have been so widely reported, the folks in the District of Columbia sure seem to have a lot of time on their hands.

2 Descriptive Epistemology 05.27.04 at 11:57 am

Government revenue generation

Overlawyered points out: the peverse incentives created by too many laws. A reasonable sounding law (public wastebaskets shouldn’t be used for household garbage) turns into government employees payed by taxpayers digging through trash in order to colle…

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