The city will have to wait until the remaining issues in the red light camera lawsuit are resolved before it can appeal the judge’s ruling.
A federal judge ruled Friday that the city of Houston may not appeal his ruling invalidating the November referendum that turned off a red-light surveillance system.
“The case is not certified for an interlocutory appeal,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes wrote in his brief order, which set a conference between the parties for July 19 to address remaining issues in the case.
City Attorney David Feldman said even though the city’s request was denied, he believes the judge is trying to bring the case to a speedy disposition, creating a final judgment that the city can appeal without asking Hughes for permission.
Given that the remaining issues could be resolved in about two weeks, I don’t think this is a big deal. All that’s left to decide is how much the city would owe the camera vendor for the eight and a half months that the cameras had been turned off, so one presumes it can be completed fairly quickly. If I’m wrong about that, that will be a problem. We’ll see how it goes.
Why isn’t getting rid of the cameras in accordance with the direction of the voters the only thing left to do? Why not exercise the 4 month termination option? Even if the court eventually rules they can’t they have to try, assuming they really want to follow the will of the voters. Keep in mind the city has control over how many tickets are approved by the reviewing officer and can extend the yellow lights making the intersections safer and reducing the number of tickets. None of these things void the contract.
I have been wrestling with something for a few days. I have been wondering why Parker would take such a huge political risk by turning the cameras back on when she has several other options available to her. I also wondered why several council members offices told me that they were just as surprised as I was that the mayor decided unilaterally, they said, to turn them back on without council approval. Then I remembered something I uncovered a little while back when I was researching camera lobbyists in Texas. One registered Lobbyist I found for ATS was;
American Traffic Systems
7681 East Gray Road Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Clark, Mark R. (00010015)
1600 State Street Houston, TX 77007
Type of Compensation: Prospective
$10,000 – $24,999.99
Client – Start: 02/22/2011 Term Date: 12/31/2011
http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/tedd/conlob2011a.htm
So who is Mark R Clark? Well there is a Mark Clark that is the executive director for Houston Police Officers Union, which also happens to be at 1600 State Street;
http://www.hpou.org/contact.cfm
Presumably Mr Clark assisted in getting the police officer union’s endorsement during the election and we know the camera PAC KHS made contributions to the union during some of their events. What was Mr Clark doing during the election? He made several pro camera statements in the media;
“The camera technology enables the Houston Police Department to do the kind of traffic enforcement that needs to be done given constraints on our city budget, as well as the resources which is the number of police officers that are available to run over a million calls a year, investigate murders, robberies, sexual assaults and all the things that are on our plate that we have a responsibility to do.”
…..”And I just can’t help but believe that the average person out there that would be going to the polls in November to vote on this wouldn’t vote to continue to keep this technology in place.”
http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/1284358441-KUHF-11-News-Poll-Houstonians-Support-Red-Light-Cameras.html
So let’s put aside, for the moment, that there seems to be something unsavory about a police union director using the police union office to conduct lobbying efforts for a corporation he helped during an election where they stood to lose millions who apparently put off official lobbying registration until after the election. That may be legal or it may not, I don’t know, maybe someone can shed some light on that.
Instead let’s ask if this is the new model for how things get done. The company gets you to tow their line and put your neck out there, if things don’t go well for you they still give you a payoff after all the smoke clears. Would this explain why someone would do something so politically dangerous as turning back on the cameras against a popular vote? Is there a “consulting” job in the future for Mayor Parker if she loses re election? I hope someone can investigate this.
Byron apparently as Paul Harvey would have said, we haven’t heard “the rest of the story.”
Comments? Anyone?
My understanding is that this is not uncommon; the Judge is given the discretion to prevent appeals of individual issues in the middle of the case. Once the final issues are determined, we’ll see if the City truly wants to appeal this case or not. The Judge can’t stop ’em then.
Very interesting, Byron. Kudos for digging that tidbit out.
I think news reports quoting Mark Clark (I believe he was just on Ch 11 or 13 last night) should have stated he was a paid lobbyist. I had not heard that. My bad if I didn’t hear it. Clark’s bad if he didn’t tell the media. The media’s bad if they didn’t report it. It certainly casts yet another shadow on the Mayor’s whole campaign.
I wish Hughes had granted the right to appeal. I hope he plans to finalize things quickly so we can get the 5th Circuit to weigh in. If he goes slow, then my appreciation for his handling of the case will decrease significantly. And there will be yet another shadow, making me wonder if I should buy into all the conspiracy theories and start looking for black helicopters above my house.
JJ, media definitely wasn’t informed. We talked to KTRH to inform them and they said he never disclosed it. If the city really wanted to get a better chance at appeal they would support Kubosh’s motion to appeal not being allowed to intervene in the original suit. From what I understand as soon as the 5th accepts the motion the judge’s order would be vacated. But COH opposed them intervening in the original case saying they were fully capable of defending the vote on their own.
Here’s the coverage, I had a press conference today at COH city hall, should be some coverage tonight. Here is the Chron article
http://blog.chron.com/houstonpolitics/2011/07/police-union-director-also-a-red-light-camera-lobbyist/