Raising Cane
By Rob Perez
Sunday, January 6, 2002
Speeding cameras
making a lot of noise
after quiet originsJudging from the controversy that the state's new traffic enforcement camera system has stirred up, you'd figure the topic would have generated all kinds of debate when it first went before the Legislature.
But you'd figure wrong.
Instead of howls of protest, the bill that originally authorized the state to set up the system sailed through the Legislature in 1998 with barely a word of opposition.
And when additional legislation was considered the following two years to refine the system, those bills passed with remarkable ease as well.
Hardly anyone had anything bad to say about the idea of using cameras to catch Hawaii speeders or red-light runners.
Yet now that the state has mailed the first citations to those caught on film, critics are springing up everywhere, raising concerns about due process, accuracy, privacy and other issues.
Where were they in 1998? Or 1999? Or 2000?
Certainly not at the Legislature.
Almost all the testimony from legislators, bureaucrats, business types, transportation officials and others favored camera enforcement. They all said the system would enhance safety on Hawaii roads and free police officers to concentrate on other priorities.
One of the few voices of dissent belonged to Sen. Sam Slom. The Republican lawmaker believed the legislation left too many questions unanswered, created too much potential for privacy and due process abuses, was more about the state making money than improving traffic safety and inappropriately gave the company that ran the system a financial incentive to ticket as many motorists as possible.
But because the bills were couched exclusively in safety terms, hardly anyone challenged them, said Slom, the only legislator to vote against the bills each of the three years.
"Immediately you're going to quiet a lot of the debate because who's going to vote against safety?" he said.
Indeed, when the 1998 bill, introduced the previous year by then-Sen. Lehua Fernandes Salling, went up for a final vote in the House, not a single member opposed it. In the Senate, only Slom and then-Sen. Whitney Anderson, a GOP colleague, voted no.
The following year Slom and Anderson again were the only legislators from either chamber to oppose a bill that made minor changes to the 1998 legislation.
When still more changes were made by the 2000 Legislature, Slom was the lone opponent in the Senate, while Reps. Barbara Marumoto and Jim Rath, both Republicans, cast no-votes in the House.
Marumoto said she always had questions about the camera-enforcement concept, but the earlier bills probably "just eluded my attention."
Like Slom, Marumoto doesn't believe Affiliated Computer Services USA, the company running the system, should be getting money for each ticket issued but should be paid a set amount by the state. Otherwise, the more tickets the company issues, the more revenue it earns.
Marumoto also questions whether the camera-generated tickets should affect a motorist's auto insurance rates.
The camera-enforcement bills eluded the attention of Marumoto and others partly because the media paid little attention to the measures as they sailed through the Legislature. Other issues -- income tax cuts, the ouster of former Attorney General Margery Bronster, civil service reform -- grabbed the headlines back then.
But now that the first parts of the camera system are in place and speeders caught on film should be getting their first citations this week, lots of attention will be focused on this pilot project. Everyone wants to see how the project -- set to end in July 2003 -- actually will work.
How fast over the speed limit will a motorist have to go before getting a ticket? How accurate will the red-light cameras be once they are installed? How will the courts deal with the inevitable challenges?
"There are a lot of potential problems," said Brent White, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii. "We'll be watching closely."
So will a lot of other people.
Star-Bulletin columnist Rob Perez writes on issues
and events affecting Hawaii. Fax 529-4750, or write to
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu 96813. He can also be reached
by e-mail at: rperez@starbulletin.com.
