MetroHealth’s security force issues parking tickets without authority

- Members of MetroHealth System's security force wrote more than 2,000 parking tickets during the past two years, even though they lacked jurisdiction. A four-year agreement between MetroHealth and Cleveland that gave the security force the authority to write the tickets expired in 2009. But since officials at the hospital and the city didn't notice, MetroHealth's employees continued to write citations that represented close to $74,000 in fines. Money from the tickets, if paid, went to the city. MetroHealth Chief Administrative Officer Dan Lewis, who was hired in 2007, said that the city issues the equipment to write tickets. "As long as we had the equipment, we thought we had the authority to do so," he said. MetroHealth spokeswoman Phyllis Marino said the expiration went unnoticed at the county's taxpayer-subsidized hospital because the agreement predated those in management.