Red light cameras are back at the state Capitol in Hartford as proponents make their annual — and, up to now, perennially unsuccessful — attempt to win legislative approval to enable Connecticut cities and towns to install electronic enforcement systems at intersections.
The legislature's transportation committee has scheduled a public hearing Monday on three bills that differ in details but all say they are intended, as one of them says, "to increase safety by reducing the number of red light violations."
As in past years, however, the issue is more than safety. It's also about revenue from fines for cash-starved municipalities, and about civil liberties concerns. And so, even though the cameras' prospects are not generally considered as good as in 2012 — when a concerted push for legalization by big cities' legislators made it appear for a while that the camera bill might pass — just the glimmer of a renewed possibility is enough to ignite an explosion of protest.
Here's an example: "Our objections to red light cameras haven't changed on civil liberties grounds, and everything we've heard in the past year make them look even worse as public policy," said Andrew Schneider, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.
"There's a corruption scandal in Chicago involving the camera vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems. And communities from San Diego to Collier County, Florida, have dumped their red light camera programs because they didn't improve safety and they're still hugely unpopular," Schneider said. "I hope these developments will show legislators in Connecticut what happens when you privatize law enforcement at the expense of the public's civil liberties."
Redflex, an Australian company with U.S. headquarters in Arizona, has been trying in recent years to help legalize the enforcement cameras in Connecticut — and state lobbying reports show that it has agreed to pay $72,000 for lobbying in this state during 2013. Its main lobbyist is a Massachusetts law firm, which is subcontracting with veteran Connecticut lobbyist Linda Kowalski, whose firm would receive $36,000 of Redflex's anticipated payment.
The scandal in Chicago, which Schneider mentioned, led that city to decide not to renew Redflex's contract after an investigation revealed that the company provided thousands of dollars in trips to the Super Bowl and other events to a former city official, the Chicago Tribune has reported. The chairman of Redflex's Australia-based parent company resigned in recent weeks amid inquiries into the contract that generated $100 million in revenue for the company over a decade, the Tribune has reported.
Asked about that situation Friday, Redflex released a statement that its global CEO, Robert DeVicenszi, issued Feb. 7, saying that a month after he took his job he commissioned an outside investigation "into issues brought to light by a whistle blower and articles in the Chicago Tribune." Although the investigation wasn't over, "we learned that some Reflex employees did not meet our own code of conduct and the standards that the people of the City of Chicago deserve."
He said Redflex was sharing information with law enforcement authorities, and that it will "take corrective action." He added: "I will do everything in my power to regain the trust of the Chicago community."
Not great timing for the return of the issue here.
But the co-chairman of the Connecticut legislature's transportation commitee, Rep. Antonio Guerrera, D-Rocky Hill, said Friday that he didn't have high expectations for this year's camera bills anyway, "with everything else we have on our plate this year" as a legislature.
Guerrera said the state's major budget problems and the vast issues raised by the Newtown school massacre — gun control, school security, and the mental health system — are likely to drain away the attention and momentum that would be required to win approval of the cameras, which have always been heavily opposed.
"Honestly, I don't see it happening. I don't even know if we have enough votes to get it out of the transportation committee," he said. But, Guerrera said, as co-chairman he likes to give lawmakers the courtesy of having their bills get a public hearing in odd-numbered years like this one when the General Assembly meets for one of its long sessions of five months — January to June.
One of the camera bills' sponsors is freshman Hartford Rep. Angel Arce, whose father was struck by a hit-and-run driver on Park Street in 2008 and died in 2009. Another bill has been put forward by several legislators from New Haven, which has pushed for the cameras year after year. The third comes from state Sen. Gary LeBeau, a Democrat whose district includes East Hartford.
The bills would allow use of the cameras in cities with populations of at least 30,000, or at least 48,000 — the population figure used in the 2012 bill; 19 municipalities would have qualified to use the cameras under that version, with East Hartford squeaking in as the 19th with a population of 51,252.
Last year's bill would have enabled the municipalities to issue tickets by mail to the registered owners of violating vehicles, imposing a $50 fine, plus an additional $15 administrative fee.
Vocal supporters of camera enforcement have ranged from municipal police chiefs to citizen safety activists — particularly from New Haven, where pedestrian deaths in recent years have united residents, city officials and state legislators in pushing for use of camera technology to combat widespread disregard for traffic signals.
Redflex's communications director, Jody Ryan, said Friday that studies show "traffic safety cameras, over time, modify driver behavior and help to create safer roadways. In January 2013, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety released a report indicating that red light running rates declined at Arlington, Va. intersections equipped with traffic safety cameras" — providing "fresh evidence that automated enforcement can get drivers to modify their behavior."
Ryan cited another study by the insurance institute in 2011 that "showed that fatal crashes were reduced by 24 percent from 1992-1996 to 2004-2008 in the 14 largest U.S. cities using traffic safety cameras, including Chicago, Washington, D.C., Phoenix and San Diego. Additionally the report also concluded that 159 lives were saved in these cities from 2004-2008 because of the cameras and 815 lives could have been saved had red light cameras been used in every U.S. city with more than 200,000 people."
But critics say those reports are contradicted by other studies, and they argue that red light cameras are more about raising municipal revenue from fines than about saving lives.
Some also argue that camera enforcement would be discriminatory: The state's NAACP opposed last year's bill and last week issued a renewed blast against this year's proposals.
"Two bills would permit red light cameras in municipalities with populations of 48,000 or more and another would set the limit at 30,000. In any case, these bills would impose automated ticketing unequally on the people living in urban areas. As we noted last year, that means disproportionately targeting minorities and the poor for a form of extra traffic enforcement that is inherently unfair, a type of geographical racial profiling," the NAACP's statement said.
It went on: "Typically, 90 percent of red light camera tickets are issued for right-on-red violations, often involving harmless, technical infractions such as the failure to come to a 100 percent stop before turning."
Jon Lender is a reporter on The Courant's investigative desk, with a focus on government and politics. Contact him at jlender@courant.com, 860-241-6524, or c/o The Hartford Courant, 285 Broad St., Hartford, CT 06115 and find him on Twitter@jonlender.
