CA AB2602

Eliminates unlimited parking privileges in restricted zones and metered spaces for disabled persons and disabled veterans with placards, effective January 1, 2018.

Creates new "free-parking status" available to disabled persons and veterans meeting specific criteria (inability to manage parking meters, reach 42 inches high, approach meters due to mobility devices, or walk more than 20 feet), allowing them to park in metered and unmetered restricted parking zones without fees for unlimited periods.

Requires applicants for free-parking status to provide physician certification of disability (by physician, nurse practitioner, certified nurse midwife, physician assistant, chiropractor, or optometrist), and makes false certification grounds for disciplinary action.

Extends criminal penalties for forging, counterfeiting, selling, or misusing disabled parking placards to also cover free-parking stickers, emblems, or other free-parking status indicators.

Requires the Department of Motor Vehicles to notify existing disabled parking placard holders of program changes beginning January 1, 2017, with notification completed by January 1, 2018.