For California motorists concerned about red light camera tickets, speed camera tickets, and new motoring taxes:
This is my first Legislative Alert since June 2014.
As always at this time of year, new legislation has been introduced in Sacramento and is working its way through the Legislature. There are two good bills.
- One will ban the camera enforcement of stop signs, which is going on in the hills around L.A.
- The other bill will provide a partial amnesty for motorists with old tickets they would like to pay off.
There are four bad bills, and one more really bad one likely to show up soon. The worst of the four known bills lowers the plurality required for voters to increase taxes.
Right now it is 67 percent, but ACA 4 will lower it to 55 percent, opening the door for lots of new road and public transit taxes voted in every year, from now on, at state level as well as at county and local levels.
Another of the known bills will increase your gas tax and car registration fees.
There is a bill to add even more government employees to the list of of those eligible for protected plates. (In California, 1.5 million private vehicles enjoy near immunity from camera and toll tickets). There is a bill to increase fines in school zones and, strangely, enforce them 24/7.
But the bill that hasn’t yet shown up will be the worst of all. It will allow speed cameras (photo radar) to be installed in California. It will be supported by the Vision Zero folks in San Francisco,
I predict it will show up very late in the legislative session, in the middle of summer, when the public is preoccupied with vacation activities. By then there will be few days for the public to react, to stop it.
That is why I am bringing it to your attention at this time.
Details about these bills is on the Action/Legis page at my site, highwayrobbery.net. The URL is http://highwayrobbery.net/redlightcamsjoin.htm .
After you have read more about these bills, please phone your state senator and your Assemblyperson. Tell them how you would like them to vote. You can get their phone numbers here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
It’s easy to call a state legislator’s office, it’s one of the few places anymore where a live person answers the phone after just a few rings.
Since our legislators often do the opposite of what we ask them to do, here is Plan B.
Plan B
Just as important as lobbying our legislators is taking direct action to cut off the photo enforcement industry’s money.
I have noticed that as soon as a city’s camera program stops making a fat net profit for the city, the city will figure out a way to take the cameras out. We need to cut their money now so that more cities take their cameras out.
How can we cut their money? One way is to educate our friends and families about Snitch Tickets so they know how to recognize them. (Snitch Tickets are what I call the fake tickets that have not been filed with the court. So they can be ignored.)
In some cities, Snitch Tickets are more than half of everything they mail out.
And so far, they are very effective. For example, Hayward’s police chief told the City Council that in a typical month she would send out 500 real tickets and 730 Snitch Tickets, and get a response back on 480 of the Snitch Tickets — an amazing 66 percent response rate to a “ticket” that can be ignored! (For more info about Snitch Tickets, go to my Your Ticket page.)
We need to let our friends know that real tickets issued by cities in L.A. County can be ignored because the County court does not report ignored tickets to the DMV.
Highwayrobbery.net has been keeping track of the fine money flowing from the L.A. County court to the various cities, and it has been growing steadily, probably because memory has faded and there’s been nothing in the major media to remind people that in L.A. County the tickets are voluntary. (Set #2 on my LA County Docs page has more info about this.)
What’s in it for you? If you take the time to educate your friends about Snitch Tickets and L.A. County tickets, you may find that suddenly you are eating better. A lot of people will be buying you lunch after they realize that you have just saved them from paying a $500 ticket.
Mr. Lissner may be contacted at editor@highwayrobbery.net
