As far as California state laws go...

the one about how cities handle parking meters that don't work is an interesting one.  The law states that if a parking meter is broken, anyone who parks there can't be ticketed unless they overstay the normal time limit on the meter.  If a meter allows ten hours, you get ten hours at that meter when it's broken.  If a meter allows 15 minutes, you get 15 minutes at that meter when it's broken.

However, the state law allows cities to opt out by posting notice at the meter that if someone parks at the broken meter they will be ticketed.  No free time, no claiming "the meter was broken", no excuse at all.  Park there and you can get a ticket.

The critics of this policy say that the sole reason the city is doing this is because of revenue.  The city does receive $5 million in revenue from tickets written citing cars parked at broken meters.  But there's more to this story than meets the eye.  The city installed new meters in 2010.  Meters that automatically notify the city that they are broken.  Between that change and the fact that there is no longer free parking available at the broken meters, the number of meters requiring repair is now down to five meters per month.  Before 2010, roughly 10% of the city's meters were out of service at any time.

Now those are city figures from an official in the city's transportation department.  But if only five meters are broken each month, and the city is receiving $5 million per year from those meters, that would indicate that each of those five broken meters is generating $83,333 in tickets each month.  That's over $2,600 each day in tickets being issued at those meters.

So something's rotten in Denmark.  Either there are a lot more than five meters broken during any month, or those are really expensive tickets.