WASHINGTON (WUSA9) Undercover WUSA9 cameras recorded Council Member Jack Evans repeatedly parking in no parking zones near his Georgetown home.
"Well I don't believe I repeatedly parked in that parking zone," Evans said. "There's a lot going on in the city these days, why are you worried about my car?"
Evans refused to look at photographs showing his repeated parking in no parking zones in December and January.
"Well thanks no, but that's all I wanted to talk to you about," Evans said. "But, thanks for coming over."
Is it legal? District officials say there's no way to know whether Evans is doing official business while he's parked there.
Is it wrong? Click here to see Georgetown University Public Policy Professor Mark Rom on why he teaches his students it is not only wrong, but immoral.
Evans and all City Councilmembers get an official tag that can save them thousands in parking, but they're only supposed to use it while on official business.
Our undercover cameras identified no official business, but did record rock star parking in a neighborhood where normal folks have to drive round and round the block just to find a spot.
We did spot checks at every other councilmember's home but Evans was the only one we found with no parking home parking.
Evans' parking habits have been questioned before by Popville.com, Georgetownmetropolitan.com, Washington City Paper, and WTTG.
He first said he didn't believe our report, then when confronted with the photos barely acknowledged using no parking zones with us, but once before he said he was sorry.
"I want to apologize for parking in a fire hydrant zone on Thursday evening," Popville.com quoted the Councilmember in November as saying. "That is, of course, no excuse, and I now fully recognize that was not a legal parking spot."
About a month later, over four weeks, we found him parked in legal parking spots in about half of our random spot checks, but six times we found his car in no parking zones, mostly at the corner of 32nd and P. St. NW, which is a few steps from his Georgetown home.
The spot is within about ten feet of the intersection and is beyond a sign that marks the no parking zone.
An officials with the DC Department of Public Works, which enforces parking, says councilmembers aren't ticketed in spots like that.
"There is no way for Parking Enforcement staff to know if the congressperson or council member is on official business or not," said DPW spokeswoman Linda Grant. "Vehicles with Congressional and Council tags are not to be ticketed for violations other than… at fire hydrants and fire stations or in loading zones."
We called Councilmember Evans' staff four times trying to set up an interview. No one returned our calls, so we approached him while he was standing at his District building office door.
"Will you answer for it now," we asked. "Your neighbors can't do that, why should you be able to do that?"
"Yeah well they can too actually after 10 o'clock at night many of the parking restrictions are relaxed."
We observed other cars parked in the same spot that were ticketed for illegal parking.
There are no restrictions we could identify that would legally allow off-duty city councilmembers to park in Evans' spots at any time of day or night.
Evans says when he gets home late, legal spots are hard to find and that he moves his car when he sees a spot become available, but when we would check back his car would be in the same illegal parking zone hours later.
