Anyone who has had a son or daughter attending college in Raleigh has probably paid a few parking tickets to the City of Oaks. I know I have. So I am fine with the city of Raleigh's move to buddy up with the state to collect unpaid parking tickets from state tax refunds.  Matt Garfield had a story about this the other day.

Raleigh has $1.6 million in unpaid parking fines since 2006. Matt says that comes out to around 16,000 tickets.

I am a big fan of local and state governments using the threat of withheld tax refunds or lottery winnings to get deadbeats to pay parking tickets, delinquent taxes and child support.

Nothing makes me crazier than stories like the one Jim Morrill of the Charlotte Observer wrote last April, reporting that state tax delinquencies exceeded $1 billion. I am one of those people who believes there is a special Barkin audit committee at the IRS and a corresponding one at the N.C. Department of Revenue that pore over my taxes every year, checking my math and making sure I've paid every last dime that I owe.

Meanwhile, deadbeats all over North Carolina are going la-di-da about their taxes, paying them when they feel like it. We are told that some of these folks included businesses that have been hit by the recession, and the like. I'm not having it. Most of us working stiffs don't have any choice but to pay taxes. It comes out of our paychecks.

I think the folks who aren't paying their taxes are the same folks who douse their parking tickets with lighter fluid to start the charcoal in their pig cookers.

So I say: Go get 'em, Raleigh.