Talking About Cameras

It's been a big week for talking about Albuquerque's photo enforcement scheme. Even though few call it by its real name, the STOP Ordinance is causing a big stir. This week the State Legislature is debating a bill that would require the City to pay a large portion of the fines to the State, and a City Councillor, Brad Winter, held a forum in the City Council meeting room where around 200 people, mostly against the Ordinance, commented.

Many of the people there were angry. Paying fines for violating traffic laws is one thing; but paying large amounts of money to the City as part of a money-making scam is something far different. We already had City and State Traffic Codes. But Mayor Chavez's STOP Ordinance is obviously little more than a way to make big money at the people's expense, and it should come as no surprise that the people resent it.

The Mayor and City Council should have thought it through. They should have realized how angry their constituents would get when they not only had "big brother" cameras watching them but a big money-making scheme supporting them. And the City's administrative foul-ups, the so-called hearing process, and the ridiculous "public nuisance" rationale haven't helped win sympathy for the cameras or the cops. The Mayor claims all the money is going back into the program, but Redflex gets a big cut and where's the approximately four million dollars that's left over and not presently accounted for?

Albuquerque media reports say the Mayor is threatening to cut out the enforcement program altogether if the State takes a cut. That leads to open skepticism about the real purpose of the STOP Ordinance, which many have suspected was just to make money, without a whole lot of concern for public safety. And today the Albuquerque Tribune editorially urged the City to STOP the camera enforcement, take a deep breath, and "retreat, reconsider, and redeploy," allowing the public a chance for comment and proposals.

The Tribune is absolutely right: stop the program and address "the myriad of public, legislative, technical and judicial concerns." It's just too bad they didn't have the sense to do that first, before they wasted so much time and money on this mess and got everyone so angry.

Stop-on-Red's e-mail address is Stop@stoponred.com. The Stop-on-Red website is, of course, www.stoponred.com.