04 April 2008

hollis downs hb1050 is a trojan horse for red light cameras!

louisiana state representative hollis downs -
another corrupt rethuglican on the loose

this evening at 6:00 pm we watched the below report by kalb's mike magnoli and at first thought representative hollis downs' hb1050 was a good idea. in a telephone interview kalb conducted with representative downs he states that
"what the bill says is that if you're a community of less than one thousand people and if someone suspected that you're running a speed trap, they could report you and that the legislative auditors' office could inspect your records and if you're collecting more than thirty-five percent (35%) of all of your town's revenue from the collection of speeding tickets, then that would be prima facie evidence that you were running a speed trap and all of the money greater than thirty-five percent (35%) from speeding tickets would have to be transferred to the state treasurer." ~state rep. hollis downs
sounds great dont it? putting a stop to speed traps by removing the financial incentive and all. however, representative downs, the typical common louisiana politician, isnt being entirely forthcoming or honest about his bill and this could be perhaps because mr. magnoli didnt read the entire bill before he interviewed him and thus didnt know what to ask him or what. we dont know.

what we do know, is that the folks at thenewspaper.com read the entire bill, because when we viewed their report on representative downs' hb1050 captioned 'louisiana: proposal bans speed traps, limits cameras' it ends:
In a move sure to please the for-profit companies that operate speed cameras, the bill would restrict speed cameras either to "high volume" locations or roads with a speed-related accident history. Most photo enforcement devices are already located on high-volume roads designed to generate the maximum amount of revenue.
so then we viewed the bill and sure enough at section h (on page 4 of the 5 page .pdf) it reads:
H. The use of photographic speed violation monitoring systems or speed vans is prohibited except along stretches of highways where there is a high volume of traffic or frequent traffic accidents caused by motor vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.
you see how these conniving politicians do dont you? on the one hand representative downs is pretending to outlaw speed traps which is a good thing but on the other hand and what he and the louisiana media dont tell you is that his bill implicitly legalizes red light cameras and speed vans of which their legality is currently in dispute by several court suits and federal complaints. section h needs to be struck from this bill or the bill killed entirely. what representative downs is trying to do is cure your cancer and then replace it with aids. hollis downs...what a fraudster.

check out how the woodworth, la. speed trap bandits refuse to appear on camera.
more woodworth speed trap information and red light scam information in the woodworth and redflex labels in the footer of this post.