No, it's worse than that, far worse. In hard times a city with a failing budget does many things to generate revenue. One of the easiest sources of revenue for

No, it's worse than that, far worse. In hard times a city with a failing budget does many things to generate revenue. One of the easiest sources of revenue for a city is a series of laws that imply fines on people for actions that at the time is considered normal behavior. Often the reason given is for "public safety" or for "public goodwill" or other similar notions. New taxes is popular too, but if you live in a city that has legal issues with creating new taxes they suddenly institute new "fees". As more cities drown in their budgets you can expect more of this behavior from some cities. Not all of them will go down this road, but many will. You can expect, and we've already seen much of this, new ideas of generating revenue such as fines, fees, and/or taxes. All at the expense of the people that these revenues are supposed to somehow help.