Posts about Bureaucracy

On the evening of May 14, 2009, about 40 Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers showed up at our house and attempted to execute the warrant they secured for the suspect. When no one answered the door, they proceeded to attempt to break down our back gate. After 45 minutes with a battering ram, drill and a crow bar they succeeded in damaging our security gate we installed before moving in, the door frame and parts of the house's exterior near the door, but they had not gotten in. They were in the process of getting a ladder so that they could break in through the second story window when my wife arrived.

After determining what was going on and showing the officers her ID, my wife was able to convince them to stop trying to break in. She coaxed them into showing her the search warrant and then allowed them inside. They briefly searched the house and admitted that they had made a mistake. They gave her some forms about how to be reimbursed for the damage, apologized and left.

We weren't angry. Police work is often time-sensitive and the impression they gave was that they were eager to catch some bad guys—which we support. They made an effort to avoid mistakes, but still mistakes will be made when one is in a hurry. No one was hurt and we expected to made whole.

Unfortunately, we had to pay to repair the damage first, and then ask to be reimbursed. To replace the door and the frame cost several thousand dollars, which we were able to pull out of our savings. But fixing damage to the exterior of the house would require removing much of the wall and the windows, and would have set us back over $10,000. We couldn't afford to float DC a loan to fix this and we were concerned that we might get stuck with the bill. Since the damage was only cosmetic we decided not to repair the exterior.

We had the repairs done over the course of the summer and fall, submitted the paperwork in November of 2009 and received a reply in January of 2010. We were advised that while the District intends to compensate residents for damages for which it is liable, it was not liable for damages in our case because the search warrant was valid.

However, DC MPD General Order 309 states, "In those instances where a forcible entry occurs as a result of misinformation, misinterpretation of information, or erroneous judgment, the Department will provide an explanation to the owner/occupant, and will repair the damage as soon as possible."

We started a dialogue with the city's Office of Risk Management (ORM) which makes the decision in these types of claims. They informed us that they have to follow the decision of the MPD, which said the claim should not be paid. When we contacted our District MPD, they said it was for the ORM to decide—though the police have their own ORM which the city's ORM accused of stonewalling.

Feeling like both sides were trying to blame the other, we asked if we could have a meeting with both agencies together. MPD declined, saying that, "The matter has been properly addressed by both agencies, DC and MPD's ORM... Although the MPD ORM does not decide whether to award or deny a claim, we do support and stand by the DC ORM's ruling that your claim is denied." I called MPD's ORM and was told, somewhat rudely, that my claim was denied, and "how hard is that to understand." After that my calls and emails to the MPD's ORM went unreturned.

Left with seemingly no other recourse, we filed suit against the District.

Property damage complaints related to police investigations are not new: the Police Complaints Board investigated them in 2005, finding that officers occasionally failed to inform people why their houses were being searched and left without arranging for repairs or informing the owners how to have repairs reimbursed. We learned from that report that MPD is supposed to immediately contact the on-call Facilities Management staff member to make necessary repairs when it appears MPD is responsible for repairs. This was not done for us.

We were not eager to go to court and were concerned that the District would win for reasons of sovereign immunity. So I made a last ditch effort and wrote letters to then-Mayor Fenty and Chief Cathy Lanier [My wife joked that I might as well write Barack Obama too, as much as that it likely to work]. I cited the general order that calls for the city to repair damage in cases like this.

I was impressed when Chief Lanier wrote me the next morning to inform me that she would get involved. By the following day, a representative of the MPD's ORM told me that, "in light of the recent development," my claim would be paid. By recent development I assumed he meant getting chewed out by the Chief of Police.

In the end we were reimbursed in full, about 5 months after making our claim, but there are three key ways this frustrating and time-consuming debacle could have been avoided.

DC needs better electronic record-keeping. Before the warrant execution, we sent back dozens of pieces of official mail, including checks intended for the previous residents, to the District. And there were at least four places in DC records where the sale, ownership and new residents of the home were documented. If the MPD is going to rely on these records as the basis for a search warrant, they should work to link them so that when changes to the recorder of deeds records are made, for example, a flag goes up in other records.

Ideally the system could be searchable so that they could search for an address and get a time-ordered listing set of records pertaining to that address. Had that existed, they could see that the person they were looking for had lived there, but that all the newest records related to a new set of owners. The information they needed was in their possession, but their system couldn't easily access it.

When property is damaged in this way, MPD needs to follow policy and offer to make repairs immediately. I'm not sure we would have taken them up on it as we preferred to use our own contractor, but not everyone is able to front the money. I have visions of people living with a broken down door for months, and that's not acceptable.

MPD should be proactive and let residents know if they're going to reimburse them for damage, and for which damage, within a very short time after an incident (i.e. a week) instead of only after the repairs are made. We were left to guess as to which damage would be covered and which would not, and to worry that none of it would be covered. A slow, mysterious bureaucratic process is not a productive way to handle these kinds of situations.

In most of our minds, the fire department is made up of guys that wear heavy coats and helmets and rush into burning buildings to save lives and use big hoses to put fires out.

But if that is all our fire department ever did, we'd probably have a lot more deadly fires. Our fire department also has fire inspectors. These are the guys that visit buildings when they are being built to make sure that there adequate means of egress, firebreaks between floors, and appropriate fire suppression systems.

Even more, they visit existing buildings regularly to make sure that extinguishers and alarms are functioning properly and they encourage people to practice fire safety and fire escape drills. And when buildings burn down, they show up and do studies to determine what went wrong so that they can learn how to prevent similar fires from breaking out in the future.

If we applied the ABRA structure to the fire department, it might be something like this:

A call comes into the fire department that there is a fire. They send someone out to see if there is a fire. They prepare a report that they saw a fire. On Wednesdays, the Fire Board meets to review reports of fire.

If the board determines that there is a recommendation that there is a fire, they create an order that says the fire should be put out. The firefighters then return to the scene and put out the fire.

The board then calls the building owner in to discuss how the fire happened. At this hearing, the building owner shows up and a local group of residents show up who think that bicyclists caused the fire. The board focuses on what the building owner can do to keep the bicyclists from starting more fires and gets him to agree to mitigating the threat of arsonist bicyclists.

Now, at the board's direction, a firefighter might occasionally drop by to see that all the bicyclist arson measures are in place and if they aren't he might write a ticket. So, in this building, bicyclists aren't allowed to have candles on their tables or order flambéed desserts. Meanwhile, two doors down, there is a bar called "The Rolling Torch" where bicyclists are encouraged to juggle burning tires and set off fireworks but since no one has ever complained about that, no one ever realizes it might be a problem.

4 weeks later, the building catches fire again. At the hearing this time, a bunch of neighbors show up to complain that the problem has nothing to do with arsonist bicyclists, but the fact that the owner keeps running his gas supply line under a giant replica of a flaming Olympic cauldron. But the board refuses to listen to them because they didn't file the appropriate paperwork with the fire board and therefore don't have standing in the hearing.

ABRA's mission is broad and vague

If an establishment requires an alcohol license of any kind, ABRA and the ABC Board have great latitude and control over that business' operations. These two government entities are essentially the primary regulators for every business that sells alcohol.

The Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) manages the administrative functions of handling paperwork, conducting investigations, and coordinating with the community. The Alcoholic Beverage Commission (ABC) Board works in concert with ABRA to evaluate issues about licensing.

As with the Taxicab Commission, mayors plug in politically-chosen appointees. This exacerbates our city's existing problems, many of which stem from councilmembers building ward-based fiefdoms, and the fact that political expediency often trumps good policy.

If an owner/operator has his or her license protested, the ABC Board hears the cases of the protestants and the licensee. If the owner/operator has an infraction of his or her license, the ABC Board will have a hearing to determine the severity of the issue and what should be done in response.

Working together, ABRA and the ABC Board control all aspects of an ABC license. Is it a restaurant, a tavern, or a nightclub? Can a retail store sell beer, wine, and liquor? What will be the hours of operation? Will there be dancing allowed? Can the establishment serve beverages outdoors? Can the establishment have entertainment? Has the licensee managed to get his trash removal vendor to come frequently enough?

These are all issues left to the discretion of ABRA and the ABC Board, and in many ways, it is astounding that an agency whose purpose is ostensibly to regulate alcoholic beverages has become such a dominant presence in our cultural and social landscape.

Broad calls for change

Laurie Collins, a long-time neighborhood activist and former ABC Board Member, proposed a set of reforms for ABRA and the ABC Board in a Georgetown Dish article. Specifically, she calls for removing ABRA from ABC Board supervision and making it accountable to the Mayor's office, establishing a professional arbitration panel within ABRA, and relying solely upon the agency staff to handle questions that arise with regard to licensing. She suggests that the ABC Board should exist in a capacity that serves as a venue for appeals that cannot be arbitrated by the staff panel.

She's right to call for reform. The structural deficiencies of the ABC Control Board that she describes in her article do indeed hamper the effectiveness and legitimacy of an important government agency. But reform needs to go even further.

As Natalie Avery pointed out, in addition to moving the ABC Board away from adjudication, ABRA needs to reorient itself to focus on mitigating and minimizing conflicts and negative impacts on the neighborhood or the community before they occur.

A high-quality urban environment requires a mix of commercial and residential uses. Invariably, the hospitality industry will be a component in a healthy neighborhood. Such businesses have an impact beyond the threshold of their establishments, whether it is the volume of music or crowds, transportation issues related to parking and sober travel, or the security of persons or property. Managing these impacts requires constant, professional engagement of regulatory agencies with stakeholders.

ABRA should grow and expand their outreach arm, which should connect business operators or prospective licensees with resources and training opportunities to help them better manage their impacts. Government can improve communication and facilitate conflict resolution when disputes arise.

There is a also a need for better coordination amongst agencies that play a role in managing and policing the hospitality industry, such as MPD, DDOT, DCRA, DPW, and FEMS. The proactive orchestration of agency, industry and community communication could go a long way toward reducing the need for a board with a heavy adjudicatory case load.

In addition, the community needs more centralized control from the Mayor's office so that city policy can be coordinated with the Office of Planning, other DC agencies that have planning roles, and economic development initiatives. The current ABC Board membership, which relies upon a political balance of Council proxies, ultimately creates an environment in which anything goes as long as no one complains too much.

There are areas of the city that are more appropriate for large crowds and late operating hours. There are also areas of the city where smaller crowds and more restricted operation is a better fit. Making those types of determinations is every bit as important as deciding on the placement of a bus-stop or a signalized crosswalk. In fact, such determinations are inherently interwoven, and yet our current approach decides on them piecemeal.

Fundamentally, we currently have in ABRA and the ABC Board a very strong regulatory body without a clear sense of purpose. It has led to an environment where businesses, residents and civic associations can't determine the likely outcome of any given decision.

Because of this, businesses and entrepreneurs can't manage the risk of opening without a liquor license; residents and civic associations feel that they must engage in an adversarial relationship in order to have their concerns addressed; and the agencies themselves must cope with a pseudo-judicial body that must weigh political concerns, as well as evidence and procedure.

There is no reason to have political appointees manage the hospitality industry. It can be effectively regulated simply by relying on professional staff, supported by arbitration panels. Moreover, ABRA is much more likely to have success in developing and maintaining a healthy and vibrant hospitality industry that can appropriately serve as a complement to locally oriented shopping areas, large entertainment districts, or tourist attractions by adopting a collaborative partnership with business, residents, neighborhood associations, and other government entities, instead of serving as an enforcement team serving at the beck and call of a politically established board.

Update: Councilmember Jim Graham asked for a response from ABRA director Fred Moosally. Here is Moosally's response:

ABRA's FY 2012 budget, with your Committee's leadership and support, contains a new community resource position intended to grow and expand ABRA's community outreach arm—as sought by the article. Additionally, the suggestions referenced by the article, including to: (1) provide prospective and current licensees with additional educational resources and training, (2) improve communication and facilitate conflict resolution between applicants and residents, including before disputes even arise, and (3) increase the level of professional engagement between stakeholders and the agency, were three of the major reasons for the creation of this position in ABRA's FY 2012 budget.

Many people sit in the park and enjoy the fountain during nice weather, but it hosts few structured events. Dupont Festival organizers want to activate the circle to become more of a community gathering place and focal point for events drawing neighbors and people from around the region.

Besides the World Cup viewing, they arranged for the park to host Police Night Out in August, a FotoWeekDC photography exhibition in November, Youth Pride Day in April, and a screening of E.T. in June.

These are just the kind of events that any city would love to have in one of their parks. But organizers report encountering little more than hostility and obstruction from the National Park Service.

Aaron DeNu is a manager of technology and outreach at The George Washington University, and has lived in DC since 2007. He was a principal organizer of the soccer day and the E.T. screening. He characterizes his experience with the Park Service as a string of "unprovoked and highly irritating tactics toward citizen groups."

For the soccer event, DeNu says he sat down with NPS officials after he and the other organizers spent considerable time crafting a detailed plan for the event. In a meeting with people from the local ANC, the Mayor's office, and Jack Evans' office, he was hoping for honest feedback and a genuine interest in collaboration to figure out how to make the event work.

Instead, he says, an official from the NPS permit office just flipped the paper DeNu had prepared upside down on the table and flatly rejected the idea, giving a long litany of reasons it wouldn't work. DeNu repeatedly asked how he could make this work, to an icy response; DeNu says "you could cut the tension in the air" at that initial permitting meeting.

They eventually did get permission to put on the event, at a cost of about $30,000, which they raised online and through local businesses. The $2,000 permit cost included hiring several Park Police officers for $66 per hour each, for a minimum of 6 hours.

Despite this, at the soccer event, DeNu says the Park Police just sat in their cruisers even when he approached them for assistance with crowd control around the edge of the circle. Instead, he turned to local MPD Lt. Scott Dignan, who brought a small team of police officers on his own initiative and helped keep the event running smoothly entirely pro bono.

DeNu ended up getting fined $3,189.85 after that event, for what NPS officials tell him was damage to the flowerbeds. But they refused to let him find some community organizations willing to fix any flowerbed issues instead.

At a wrap-up meeting following the soccer event, Dupont Festival President Mike Feldstein says, the permit official "gave a long rant about all of the awful things that they thought happened that day." But MPD Sergeant John McDonald quietly pointed out to the Park Service that such events are "about the best things to happen in Dupont Circle, since they directly contribute to reducing crime in the area," Feldstein said.

The Park Police were much more helpful a year later for E.T. DeNu says the officer there was very encouraging and supportive when he was wrangling with another hostile NPS employee, a park ranger who arrived just a few hours before the event. As DeNu tells it, the ranger immediately started criticizing him for arriving in the park before the hour specified on his permit, not having pieces of plywood to place beneath two tripods. She also threatened to completely "pull the plug" on the event.

According to DeNu, none of this had been discussed during meetings with the permit office, but was in the permit. Why hadn't he read the permit in detail? Because, DeNu says, their contact in the permit office refused to send it over email or provide it in person but instead would only fax it the day of the event, while DeNu was busy setting up.

The day before, DeNu received an email at 5:06 pm notifying him he had to procure insurance for the event. The email says that this was part of a letter sent to Feldstein a week earlier. Feldstein says in a reply that he never received that letter. Nor, DeNu notes, did anyone tell them of this requirement during face-to-face meetings.

DeNu frantically called around the next morning and managed to find an insurer in Indianapolis who could cover the event on short notice. DeNu says he then showed up in person to deliver proof of insurance, only to hear of additional paperwork issues that had to be resolved involving W-9 forms.

He forwarded their permit official the proper form, which he claims he had already sent, and asked the official to check his email right away to ensure it had arrived; instead, he says, the official "stared me down" and made things "very uncomfortable there at the permit office."

An email thread from the day in question goes into a lot of minute detail about various forms, but it's clear from reading the exchange that the permit official is not taking advantage of opportunities to work constructively with DeNu and Feldstein to help make the event happen.

Whether there were indeed errors in the forms, or whether a letter was sent or not, is not the point. Reading the exchange, it appears that that DeNu was trying to do everything to make the event work, even sending copies of forms both on paper and electronically, while the NPS permit office set up a gauntlet of bureaucratic obstacles with the threat of rejecting the permit entirely at the last moment as penalty for a mistake.

Feldstein said in one of the emails, "While last-minute notifications by the National Park Service is our usual experience, it is still upsetting, time consuming and most certainly not operating in a friendly, supportive manner."

Repeatedly, DeNu says, the NPS explained these bureaucratic procedures on the grounds that they apply the same procedures to parks across the country, from the Grand Canyon to Dupont. But local neighborhood parks are not the same as Yellowstone. That is a unique wilderness area that needs strong protection. Anyone organizing an event there surely has the ability and resources to plan far ahead and comply with complex procedures.

Car manufacturers and movie studios would love to bring heavy equipment into some large wilderness parks to shoot commercials or films, and that could certainly damage the fragile environment. Giant rallies have a right to operate on the Mall, but without provision for cleaning up trash and handling bathroom facilities, it could turn into a nightmare.

For small neighborhood parks, however, it's just not necessary to impose the same complex rules and procedures. A few small tripods for E.T. will not cause the same damage as a crane-mounted camera might. It serves a park's purpose to help energetic residents or small neighborhood organizations to hold events even if they don't have years of experience and teams of lawyers to ensure they get every form right the first time.

This is one of the many reasons the Park Service needs to develop separate procedures for events in urban parks. Or, better yet, they could encourage local Parks Conservancy organizations, as New York has, that handle much of the day-to-day administration and maintenance in the parks.

A local Dupont organization could manage such events, perhaps getting the insurance themselves and helping neighbors through the process, including teaching them to anticipate issues NPS officials don't bring up during the in-person meetings. It could also either make sure tripods don't damage the ground, or get local groups to fix any damage that might result, without having to go through the Park Service's complex national procedures and rules.

Dupont Festival hopes to make future events easier and build the expertise and resources needed to deal with NPS's requirements each time. That could assist more residents who want to make Dupont able to fulfill its potential for the neighborhood. But they could do so much more if NPS could only look beyond its strange insistence on identical rules for Dupont as for Yosemite, and its hostility toward working with community groups.

Colbert King named all the newly created DME office's staffers and their salaries in a 2007 Washington Post column. He was trying to contrast their salaries with those of DCPS teachers. Singling out these individuals was not very classy, but the larger point was a good one: we need to scrutinize these decisions and justify the added expense of the office.

With a new mayor, it's time for a fresh start. Mayor Gray should appoint a strong administrator and trusted education advisor to head OSSE. This appointment may be the most critical one of Gray's administration, far more consequential than the Chancellor of DCPS. OSSE has (or should have) authority over the Chancellor as well as the Public Charter School Board (PCSB), which is in charge of the city's 55 public charter schools.

OSSE will be helping local education agencies implement the District's $75 million Race to the Top grant and other federal grants. Want to improve the DC CAS, the standardized test upon which state and local accountability are based? OSSE selects and manages the test vendor.

To make up for the lack of a DME, the head of OSSE will have to be skilled at working with other city agencies like facilities management (OPEFM), police (MPD), parks & recreation (DPR), and mental health (DMH). He or she will need strong access to the Mayor and an ability to get a lot done on a limited budget.

The Mayor-elect has criticized his predecessor's education policy for being too "short-sighted, narrow, and clandestine," and for short-changing the city's charter schools. Mayor Gray campaigned on a One City promise that all public schools would get equal funding and attention. One way to put that promise into action and simultaneously win good government points would be to centralize responsibility for education in a State Superintendent who can work well with the new Chancellor, the PCSB, the Mayor, and the Council.

That would free up the Mayor to eliminate the bureaucracy that his predecessor created and broaden education reform to encompass all public schools, not just DCPS. It would give the city a renewed focus on education, but in a more accountable and rational manner suitable for the next phase of the city's education transformation.

This policy makes no sense. This has been done in exactly this way in cities everywhere. Even Arlington allowed cross traffic at some signalized intersections for Bike DC. We have trails which act as roads closed to motor vehicles, but which periodically cross regular streets with (or sometimes without) traffic signals.

Pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicles interact all the time at intersections every day. We even have special electrical light-based devices at the corners to guide the orderly interaction of traffic in the various directions. If it were really dangerous for cars to take turns with pedestrians, then every intersection in the city would require concrete barriers walling off the sidewalks from the roads and skybridges or tunnels to cross. It's crazy.

Sure, complete separation greatly reduces the possibility of anything happening. Some have speculated that this rule stems from an incident a few years ago where a driver on drugs drove through a barrier into a special event and killed people. However, it's not possible to completely reduce every risk. Bicycling down a street with no cars and only two signalized intersections with cross traffic is surely safer than bicycling down a regular street with cars and cross traffic at every intersection, and people do that every day, almost always safely.

This brings to mind DDOT's response to the folks trying to organize Park(ing) Day, which turns parking spaces into temporary parks for a few hours. In other cities, organizers have done this simply by placing some temporary turf and a bench on a parking space, often with permission. Here, DDOT public space officials wanted concrete barriers on all three sides, barrels and flags at the corners, 2-foot empty spaces inside the barriers, 22-foot clear zones on either side along the curbs.

In other words, to separate people sitting in the park from cars, they required enormous barricades and empty spaces, even though people come far nearer cars every day when sitting at a bus stop and have no such protections. But these security decisions aren't about reason, they're about the approving official eliminating every possible risk no matter how ridiculous and regardless of everyday practice.

If HSEMA, MPD, and FEMS hold firm to this rule, there can't ever be a Summer Streets outside a park. They should try visiting another city to see how workable this really is, or perhaps just try visiting a street corner to see that those work as well. Meanwhile, DDOT will again hold this year's Summer Streets in Fort Dupont.

Recently, MPD stopped providing these signs and started referring people to the new online system. Currently, users have to pick up the signs using kiosks at the North Capitol Street permit center, but the site says they will soon add kiosks at the police stations as well. The site now automatically knows if there are parking meters on the block you are requesting.

Permits cost $34. If someone is moving and needs two separate locations, they have to pay twice, As they refine the system, DDOT might want to consider letting people reserve two spots each for half a day for a similar price as one spot for a whole day.

It also restricts people to reserving four parking spaces. When I moved, I needed more spaces as there were two trucks, one very long; I also was denied more by the permit center, but could easily reserve more using the police station's signs. Since few people used the old regulations, DDOT may need to tweak the rules as everyone starts following them to ensure they don't restrict people unnecessarily.

The biggest danger is that once they've sunk $500,000 into this, it'll be all the more difficult to then agree to release the data gratis. Right now, the debate is about doing something that costs Metro nothing, and getting a benefit to riders. After $500,000 goes down the drain, it'll psychologically shift the debate into one about whether it's right to do something that doesn't recoup the investment, despite the benefit to riders.

At last week's Board meeting, Metro's Sarah Wilson repeated another one of staff's arguments against this project: that it might cut into the money Metro gets from ads on wmata.com. But Metro only gets $70,000 a year from ad revenue on the site, out of a total budget of about $1.5 billion. That's four-thousandths of a percent of the budget, and probably less than Sarah Wilson makes.

Sure, every little bit helps, but if the $70,000 in ad revenue is such a concern, why is $500,000 acceptable for a contract just to find out about the possibility of making money? There's no way that working with Google Transit is going to reduce all of that revenue. Let's say it reduces it by $10,000 a year. Just to recoup the $500,000 would take 50 years.

Zimmerman also noted that better and more accessible trip planners could bring in more riders at off-peak times. Many buses and most trains are full at rush hour, but the commuters don't need a site to tell them how to get to work. The people who would use it are tourists visiting the area, and people riding to unfamiliar locations. A lot of that is off-peak. And every rider who takes up an empty seat on a bus is pure profit for Metro.

Anyway, Metro's real business is transportation. The ad revenue is a nice sideshow, but it shouldn't trump convenience to riders. Wilson was arguing that Metro should not help riders in order to force them to use the Web site against their will, all to protect this tiny sliver of revenue. Why not charge for the trip planner entirely? Should Metro promulgate a new policy that every train will pause for 15 seconds after it reaches a station and before the door opens, in order to force riders to look at the ads on the walls? What's the difference?

Of course, the difference is that the ad revenue is a line item on the IT department's balance sheet. If Metro gets more money in bus fares from riders who use the system because of Google Transit, they get no credit. But if ad revenue goes down, even a tiny bit, that might hit their budget and deprive them of the opportunity to hire more staff. It's a common attitude in bureaucracies and large companies alike.

The IT department clearly isn't going to see the big picture. It's the General Manager's job to do so, or if he can't, the Board of Directors. One of them has to stand up and say that it's more important to help riders and try to increase ridership on services with extra capacity than to zealously guard a tiny bit of ad revenue on wmata.com and obsess over a departmental P&L.

Next: Why Metro IT might be moving so slowly.

Opening up data allows both large companies and small "garage" developers to build applications. The policies of an organization affect both, but the economic forces affecting these are very different. If a larger company is going to work with Metro, they'll probably only do it if there's some money in it, which means they're willing to spend some lawyer time upfront to negotiate a good contract. Transaction costs aren't good, but they won't necessarily derail the project entirely.

A garage developer, on the other hand, is probably doing the project in his spare time, for fun. Even if there's the possibility of making some money, such as selling the app for $5 a pop in the iPhone app store, it's not going to be a major source of profit. Most likely, those fees won't even come close to compensating the author for his or her time. If he'd put the same amount of time into working for a tech company, he'd make way more. He might even have made more working at McDonald's than spending the equivalent amount of time on the application.

This is one fallacy in Gordon Linton's admonishment that someone out there might be "lining their pockets." Perhaps sometimes that's the case, but most of the time they're lining those pockets with enough to buy a nice lunch.

Because the money is a secondary consideration at best, the transaction cost is a huge deterrent. If the developer has to even spend one afternoon negotiating with Metro, it's a big burden. To Metro, it's no big deal to put weeks into carefully assembling a deal. To the developer, the thing could have been done already. Therefore, most people won't even bother. There are plenty of neat ideas out there that could make a good app. Why build the one that forces you to waste a lot of time not programming when you can just start coding on something else? Programmers want to be programming, not negotiating with bureaucracy.

That's why the best policy for Metro is to make it very painless to participate. The Boston MBTA, Chicago CTA, Portland TriMet and others have created developer resources pages to help developers get started. Agencies need to keep well-meaning lawyers who don't understand the real costs of their involvement away from this. The best way to do that is to create a standard license agreement anyone can sign on to, one that doesn't demand payment, indemnification, or any other cost present or future.

There's a large benefit to riders of having these apps, and a very small potential revenue source. Trying to grab the revenue just kills the projects (and wipes out the revenue as well). Linton worried about people making money off bus position data. But right now, as Zimmerman noted, nobody is building any apps, period, and nobody is making any money anyway. Nobody wins that way.

Next: But what about Google and their billions of dollars?