As a probe continues of City Hall’s increasingly shadowy relationship with its problematic red light camera vendor, certain officials are pulling back from their former willingness to talk on the record.
The city’s dealings with deeply troubled Redflex Traffic Systems, Inc., may be as clean as heavily soaped hands.
But the stubborn refusal of certain key persons to be forthcoming casts doubt over growing suspicions.
Earlier this week, hours after unanimously, enthusiastically voting to retain Redflex for three more years despite a heap of bribery allegations, some City Council members have begun to clam up.
After declaring earlier that they had casually inspected allegations of corruption against Redflex and effectively dismissed them, now they are saying something quite different:
Select sensitive aspects of the Culver City-Redflex link are not permitted to be discussed in public, a full flip-flop.
Further, they are disagreeing with each other.
Two days after interim Police Chief Scott Bixby told the newspaper that the department’s “entire” investigation of Redflex consisted of a “comprehensive” consultation with Redflex – without independent verification – a City Hall source of stature has flatly contradicted the chief. Without factual elaboration, the person said “there was much more” to the “investigation,” but that it could not be discussed in public.
When the Police Dept. agreed to talk to the newspaper about its role in the Redflex Affair, it was on the condition that some background aspects remain off the record.
All of this emerges barely 72 hours after Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells and police Capt. Allen Azran agreed openly at last Monday’s Council meeting that whatever ails Redflex in Chicago could not happen in Culver City. Without naming the concept, they indicated that the multi-million dollar bribery case involving Redflex in Chicago is a mere outlier that should be treated the same way as an unmet distant relative.
Not one of the five sitting Council members – and all went on the record – admitted even a remote doubt about rehiring Redflex. They swore allegiance to a company that apparently spread-eagles its field while casting gigantic shadows.
The redlight camera game reminds some critics of playing baseball in the dark. Culver City, for example, has no idea how much revenue it collects each year from the 18 cameras that cover 11 intersections.
Some Council members have acknowledged the revenue – large, small, medium – is of no consequence. The only part that counts they say is reducing accidents, although this evidence, like others, apparently has not yet hovered into public view.
