High Desert Perspective

Posted By Staff Reporter on April 19, 2010

Editorial: A stop sign for an unholy alliance

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Already home to the “happiest place on Earth,” Anaheim also may soon become home to the happiest drivers on Earth with a new proposal from the City Council that would ban automatic traffic enforcement systems, better known as red-light cameras. The council’s actions illustrate how Anaheim often has a propensity to be a leader in the county for individual liberty.

The council Tuesday expressed unanimous support for an amendment to the city’s charter that would seek to permanently ban red-light cameras within city limits. The Register reported that the council announced plans to adopt a formal resolution to amend the city’s charter in the coming weeks. The amendment would then go to voters in November.

This would be a wise amendment for city residents to support.

In Los Angeles, red light cameras generate about $3.8 million a year in fines. The way these cameras work is a private company provides and operates the cameras – which capture on video the license plates of vehicles that run red lights, generating a ticket mailed to the registered owner – for a cut of the city’s fine revenue, an awful example of a so-called public-private partnership.

Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle told us it is important to ban red-light cameras because they distort public safety as a means to raise city revenue. Tom Tait, a former councilman and a candidate for mayor, said the cameras create “a profit incentive to increase violations. The purpose of traffic laws and enforcement should be public safety … not profit.”

Whether the systems decrease traffic accidents is being called to question. KCAL/TV news broadcast an investigative report in November on the effectiveness of red-light cameras in Los Angeles and concluded that accidents actually increased at intersections where the automatic traffic cameras were installed. The Los Angeles Police Department disputed the station’s report, contending that certain types of collisions had, in fact, decreased, such as fatal accidents. But the data compiled for the TV news report indicated rear-end collisions were more likely at intersections where cameras were installed.

Regardless, red-light cameras are at best of only limited, selective use. They create a Big Brother-like environment, have questionable effect on safety and only serve the purpose of growing government coffers. Early this year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger even floated the idea of using existing red-light cameras to also dole out speeding tickets, as a way to close the state budget gap.

Such law-enforcement efforts are one of the worst examples of public-private partnerships – where for-profit companies lobby politicians and bureaucrats to adopt the devices in order to increase government revenue while turning a profit for the company, both at the expense of the taxpayer.

Anaheim’s council made the right move. We hope city voters have the chance to endorse the decision

Categories: National World, Politics, State of California
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