ATS was a particular fan of Stein's conclusion that the cameras worked. "I don't think they ever offered me a bribe, but they said, 'Do you want to work on the team?'" said Stein. "I said, 'I can't work on the team! If I do, then it's not me. It's ATS.'"
Stein believes the program does increase safety. But he also thinks the public will never stand for the cameras, given the chance to vote. "No referendum has ever sustained a red light camera program," he said, adding that 12 have gone down in defeat across the country. "I think this is a case where good public policy is not always embraced by the public."
photo by Mandy Oaklander
Traffic attorney Paul Kubosh is the ringleader of Houston's anti-camera movement and fixture at city hall.
photo by Mandy Oaklander
Kubosh often led protests demanding that either the cameras go or the mayor depart.
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Immediately after the last red-light cameras flashed, city council began to change its talking points. "That's when they started talking about money — how much better it would be if they had that $8 million from the cameras," said council woman Jolanda Jones.
City attorney Feldman brought a suit in federal court within a couple weeks of the election, asking for a declaratory judgment about Houston's obligations to ATS in light of the election.
The Kuboshes and Jones, who is an attorney, both smelled trickery. Why wouldn't Feldman file in state court, where judges are elected and wouldn't dare dump the results of the election? "I'm not a conspiracy theorist," Jones said, "but I kept saying man! From a legal perspective, I could not understand any legal move we made."
"Frankly," Feldman explained, "we felt given the highly politicized nature of the issue that we would be better off bringing the action in federal court." Judges there, he said, "would be above any type of political influence." But to many, the federal court where Feldman sued reeked of politics. It just happened to be the home court of District Judge David Hittner — father of George Hittner, general counsel for ATS. Judge Lynn Hughes, who received the city's case, has worked in the same court as Judge Hittner for 24 years.
Fearing no truly adverse parties in what they called a "tickle fight" of a lawsuit, the Kuboshes tried to intervene with their own lawyers. ATS and the City of Houston both opposed the intervention. Feldman's reason? "In my experience being a trial lawyer for 35 years," he said, "the more cooks you have in the kitchen, the more difficult it is."
ATS had seven lawyers on the case. Houston had only three. And in June, Judge Hughes ruled the election had been illegal.
ATS told the city to either pay $20 million in damages — a number that would soon grow to $25 million, including all of ATS's Keep Houston Safe campaign costs, lawyer fees and the city's hypothetical uncollected future fines — or turn the cameras back on. While Feldman appealed the ruling, Parker flip-flopped yet again, and on August 1, she reignited the cameras. Voters, again, were outraged.
"I've stated this publicly over and over again, and I don't know why people don't hear me," Parker said at a city council meeting. "I understood the will of the voters. I turned the cameras off. I'm doing my level best to keep the cameras off permanently. However, I'm not willing to take $20 million out of the city budget where I've already had to lay people off. So I'm trying to limit the damages."
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Red-light cameras continued to leech time and focus from policymakers. Public speeches at city council meetings grew louder, longer and more numerous. People were so furious that Parker had disrespected the will of the voters that even those who voted for the cameras demanded they be turned off, including Pastor James Nash. He attended virtually every city council meeting and demanded that the city respect the voters' wishes. "Every Sunday, I stand up at my pulpit and talk about the need for people to get out and vote," he said. "A lot of time people say, 'There's no need for me to vote. My vote won't be counted.' In this particular instance, it's true."
On top of everything else, council members didn't know what to say when their constituents asked if they needed to pay red-light violations. On this point, City Attorney Feldman was clear. "The citizens of Houston should not be mistaken: We are going to collect on these fines," he said in a council meeting. "We also have the authority to report to credit bureaus."
"Specifically barred by law," Paul Kubosh said of Feldman's threat. In fact, he and his brothers helped some state representatives draft an amendment to transportation code 707 back in the early 2000s, in order to take the bite out of red-light cameras. Some of Kubosh's fantasies didn't go through, such as granting everyone who receives a red-light ticket the right to a jury. But others did. Take section 2h: "A local authority or the person with which the local authority contracts for the administration and enforcement of a photographic traffic signal enforcement system may not provide information about a civil penalty imposed under this chapter to a credit bureau." The most they can do to you, the Kuboshes say, is to forbid you to register your car online and force you to do it in person.
