In Monday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times, a front page article explains how many California legislators favor using money from local government and transportation accounts.
Several months ago, I wrote a letter to thefrontpageonline.com about the Culver City Police Dept. Red Light program and what a loser program it was for the city.
In 1992/93, I was in charge of the Police Dept. budget when the state was in the Red and could not balance their budget.
In 1992, one local government revenue source that was raided by the state was Traffic Citation Fines. The state increased their portion of the revenue to 24 percent, which is where, I believe, it stands today.
The state also took money from the California court system. In turn, the state increased their portion of the Traffic Fines.
In 1992, the loss in revenue from Traffic Fines alone was $450,000. I am sure that if the state raids this revenue source this time, it will be at a much greater cost than it was in 1992.
In the end, this money will help the state balance their budget, and they never will decrease the percentage after the crisis has passed.
The Court will increase their portion to whatever the state takes from them.
The Red Light Camera company will continue to profit through this crisis with their new multi-year contract. They will continue to hire people connected to Culver City government to work for them, in order to showcase their product to the world at the city’s expense.
If the state raids our Traffic Citation revenues this time, I hope the city is in a position to fight back.
If the City Attorney took staff’s recommendation and included some type of escape clause in the new Red Light Camera contract for the city, then the city could completely dump this loser program and survive a possible raid on traffic fines.
Otherwise, the city will have to cut other City services in order to fund a program that already operated in the Red (no pun intended).
