City works on reducing abuse of city cars

Trying to get city employees to scale back the use of city cars for personal travel is only slightly easier than trying to force gasoline back into a gas pump.
At least Youngstown city officials are working at it, although we think their recently promulgated regulations could be tougher in a few areas.
The problem of differentiating between the use and abuse of city cars is nothing new. Exactly 25 years ago, the city was grappling with it.
A three-member committee worked for months to develop an ordinance that would promote the use of a motor pool, with most employees who needed a city car drawing a vehicle from the pool. Only a small number would be assigned cars.
That proposal fizzled because city council said it was too specific. Council members wanted some flexibility, not an ordinance spelling out which department heads got cars and which didn't. Mayor Jack C. Hunter, who was nearing the end of his term, was less than enthusiastic about the plan because it may have required him to take cars away from some of his department heads.
Then, as now, insurance costs were a big motivator behind tightening the policy. In 1976, the city's premiums were $42,000. They jumped to $79,000 in 1977.
More cars, higher costs
Today, the city has about twice as many cars, and liability and property loss coverage costs $154,800.
However, a bizarre interpretation of Ohio's uninsured motorist coverage by the Ohio Supreme Court has increased the liability of corporations -- municipal and private -- in Ohio, and insurance rates are on the rise again.
Even under the new regulations, 28 city employees have use of a city car for work and private transportation, as long as they stay within 50 miles of the city. Another 28 get to drive their cars to and from work, but can't use them casually.
That's still a large number of city cars and a sizable group of privileged employees. At least the new policies should avoid the kind of abuse seen a few years ago, when the former water commissioner was regularly driving his city car to Mountaineer Park in West Virginia.
While the city was smart to require its employees who drive city vehicles to open their driving records to inspection, it would have been wiser still to demand that any employee who drives a city car demonstrate his personal insurability. That would limit the city's exposure under that Supreme Court case we mentioned, which in effect makes the city the insurer of last resort for an employee in an uninsured-motorist accident, even if the employee wasn't driving a city car at the time.
Also, accidents involving cruisers should be investigated by an outside agency -- the sheriff's department or highway patrol, not city police -- to remove even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Our reservations notwithstanding, the policy is a good start.