OPINION:
Rumors are swirling that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will ban the District of Columbia’s automated cash grab. Politico says it has seen the written plan to prohibit the federal city from preying on its citizens with speed, red light and stop sign cameras. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser isn’t happy.
“Removing the cameras would also create a $1 billion hole in D.C.’s financial plan, which would mean cuts to everyday city services,” she said in a statement last month.
Her shakedown is impressive. City officials lower speed limits to an unrealistic level, and then they relax as their for-profit vendor snaps pictures of cars being driven by motorists who never suspected the limits could be as implausible as they are.
Mercenary firms take care of everything. They decide where to stage the traps, they operate the machinery, and they determine who is guilty. They even write the words politicians use to defend the lucrative enterprise. It’s about as legitimate as a Somali day care center in Minneapolis.
Axios charted the city’s top 10 money-spinning cameras and realized the one outside Sibley Memorial Hospital had strategically pilfered $6 million from patients headed to the emergency room.
During a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting in September, Rep. Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Republican, confronted Ms. Bowser about her radical robotic camera expansion. She insisted safety was her only motivation.
Pointing to city documents, Mr. Perry disagreed. “It says here that you planned to fill a $580 million revenue hole in your budget shortfalls using traffic cameras, right? You said that.”
He then recited traffic fatality figures that worsened as automated ticketing machines multiplied. “Cameras are not making people safer — particularly in Ward 7 and 8, where it’s predominantly a Black population 20% below the poverty line. These fines imposed on them hurt the worst.”
The District isn’t alone. Now that Virginia has turned blue, no fewer than a dozen initiatives before the General Assembly would make such operations even more rewarding for state and local bureaucrats.
On Wednesday, the state Senate approved a measure removing the fiction that police officers oversee these programs. Senate Bill 59 replaces cops with “technicians.” House Bill 994 dispenses with the pretense that photo radar devices are “protecting the children” in school zones.
Delegate Holly M. Seibold’s proposal lets greedy local jurisdictions install an automated ambush anywhere they please as long as each location has a “safety red zone” label slapped on it. The contractors running the show will happily conduct studies to identify the most bankable streets under 45 miles per hour.
Democrats latch on to these schemes because automobiles embody a self-reliance anathema to the liberal worldview. Fortunately, President Trump selected a Transportation Department chief who cares about the public.
“Freedom means affordable cars. For U.S. DOT, that means getting rid of nonsense environmental rules that make it impossible to build vehicles,” Mr. Duffy recently said.
Mr. Duffy can liberate the District’s visitors and commuters from the snares set by unscrupulous private companies, and that would have the side benefit of forcing Ms. Bowser to be more frugal in her budgeting. Still, he should do more.
He needs to update the guidance his department provides to state transportation agencies to discourage the fleecing of citizens under the guise of law enforcement. Stop approving federal grants for cameras. Millions use the roads daily to get to work or drop off their children at school.
Put a couple of billion dollars back into their pockets.
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