Talk Story
Are Tali-van fighters
scofflaws or patriots?I woke Friday morning to a news broadcast that included two stories that could make you believe we are a nation of scofflaws.
The first was a report about how police in Los Angeles are prohibited by ordinance from making arrests based on violations of immigration law. Unable to change the law that makes being an undocumented alien illegal, the Board of Supervisors just wrote another one that forbids enforcing it. Clever.
The second was a local piece about the State Department of Transportation caving in a bit to legislative pressure to dump the unpopular "Tali-van" traffic cameras. DOT will now disclose van locations -- no more "Surprise, you're on Candid Camera!"
It also took longtime spokesperson Marilyn Kali off the case. The rumor that she'll now become public information officer for the USS Greeneville is specious but delicious.
Gov. Ben Cayetano wisely pointed out the obvious: Scrapping the program because of the recent protests would be a "knee-jerk reaction." Still, I'm glad that the big, bad, arrogant, callous, deaf, unfeeling Transportation Department isn't just circling its wagons anymore.
WE can't expect state government to have as much spine as the Vatican, for example. While most American Catholics ignore Rome's strict ban on birth control, it perseveres nevertheless, demonstrating a resolve equal to that with which it insisted that the sun rotates around the Earth for centuries after Galileo exposed the error.
The camera-van program, too, is flawed.
First, the cameras shouldn't be playing "gotcha" on busy stretches of open highway. They belong near schools, at the ends of freeways or at the entrances to high-density communities where they perform a socially redeeming safety function.
Out on the highways, we should have real, live police. Highway patrolmen do more than write speeding tickets. While their visibility deters speeding, they also respond to accidents and emergencies and help with breakdowns. The camera vans don't.
The company that operates the vans has a name right out of a Roadrunner cartoon: Affiliated Computer Services. It's clear now that giving ACS a cut of the take from each ticket it issues was a bad idea.
State administrators understand constitutional requirements to balance the budget. However, they appear to be congenitally blind to conflicts of interest. To launch a new, high-tech, traffic-calming program that pays for itself looked like a bureaucratic masterstroke. It turned into a political nightmare.
Like the University of Hawaii's softball field, it will cost more to do it right.
One critic suggests that DOT does everything half-assed -- whether it's fixing potholes, leaving sharp-cornered steel plates all over the roads, letting guardrails rust away to nothing before fixing them, allowing rocks to fall off cliffs into traffic and setting speed limits inconsistently. So why should this program be any different?
A better question is: Why have camera vans generated more public indignation than the horrible accidents, street racing and carnage that spawned them?
Bad timing is one reason. The vans rolled out just as the heavy hand of uniformed security clamped down on us at airports and homeland security was becoming intrusive and expensive. Simultaneously, headlines hounded us about the state budget crisis and the Sept. 11-spawned economic crisis.
Add the pay-per-ticket aspect and it's easy to see why people view the camera vans as a new revenue source for government foisted on them without adequate discussion, input or representation.
The British tried that when they passed the Tea Act to raise money by imposing port duties. In response, 50 Sons of Liberty disguised as Indians boarded three East India Company ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor.
The Boston Tea Party of Dec. 16, 1773 has been called "one of the most effective pieces of political theater ever staged." Future president John Adams was not a fan of mob violence, but he admitted, "There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire."
The anti-Tali-van petition signed by 46 legislators and delivered to the governor on Wednesday does not rise to that level of magnificence.
It does, however, reflect a public rancor that needs quelling.
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.