Federal judge invalidates red-light camera referendum, lectures elected Councilmembers
U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled Friday that the referendum was improperly placed on the ballot last year, and the city cannot be forced to turn off the cameras.
Hughes said Houston's city charter requires that efforts to overturn ordinances by referendum must occur within 30 days of an ordinance's passage.
Opponents to the red-light ordinance, which passed in 2004, mounted the election challenge last year and got it on the ballot as a charter amendment, but Hughes said that was essentially the same as repealing it.
"Presented with this mislabeling, the council supinely ignored — over voices of some of its members — their responsibility and put the proposition to the voters as an amendment to the charter," Hughes wrote.
So, a federal judge has seen fit to substitute his opinion about a local referendum for the opinions of both elected councilmembers and voters.
That's rich.
Nevertheless, the federal judge can't make the outcome of the vote disappear into thin air. Voters were clear that they want the red-light cameras to go away.
Because a federal judge has substituted his opinion on the referendum for that of Council and voters, the cost of breaking the contract may well be substantial (thanks, Bill White, for handcuffing the City of Houston's ability to get out of the contract), but it's the choice that Mayor Annise Parker needs to make. Just a few days ago, Mayor Parker announced her latest revision to the Parker/Costello rain tax (to bring the average bill closer to what proponents of the rain tax promised), speaking of the need to keep faith with voters. Along the same lines, keeping faith with voters would seem to require the cameras to go.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/19/11 09:11 PM | Print |
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