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The letter from my favorite pen pal — the city of Albuquerque — ruined a perfectly fine autumn afternoon.

The note's contents were easy enough to glean. I'd been nabbed by a red-light camera at Montgomery and Carlisle boulevards Northeast. Not for running a rojo but for zipping along at 45 mph in a 35 mph zone.

Me, the Jimmie Johnson of the Northeast Heights. Who knew?

I racked my brain for an entire weekend, trying to remember going through the intersection or why I was in that part of town in the first place. To this day, it's my Rose Mary Woods moment: 18 minutes of erased mental tape.

Still, the evidence was clear — a nice photo of my car as it reached the intersection, a close-up of my license plate, even a Web-only video if I wanted to see it all play out in real time.

What a concept. Only in Albuquerque can you be Lindsay Lohan and your government play the role of TMZ.com.

Nevertheless, I paid the $100 fine, eschewing the haggle and hassle that surely would come with an appearance before a hearing officer. My nightmare scenario was this opening statement: "Duh, I dunno what happened."

My backup nightmare was that somehow I'd get off the hook — and into my own newspaper under the headline: "Trib editor skids out of traffic fine."

But now I'm thinking I want my money back.

And I want Mayor Martin Chavez and most of the City Council to autograph a picture of my Acura when the refund check clears.

Because, duh, we were all suckers on this red-light business.

Chavez and Police Chief Ray Schultz have long insisted the red-light camera program has done its job — intersections in the city are safer and slower because we're all driving with one hand on the wheel and one hand protecting our wallet.

Nobody's going to write a folk song over such an approach, but as a public safety strategy goes, that's fine and fair: Slow down, save lives — or pay the price.

I think a lot of us can live with that.

But if the betterment of Albuquerque was the real endgame here, why did Chavez suddenly decide to create a panel to review the red-light cameras?

Tell you why. The program's hefty fines are wildly unpopular, and Chavez was, at the time he announced the task force, running for U.S. Senate. Simple as that.

And it could end right there, with ambition and realpolitik sharing the end credits on red-light video.

But, as always, it gets better.

The City Council, never afraid to close the barn door after the horse escapes to the hills, voted 3-2 to stop the red-light program as we hold our collective breath to await a report on the merits of the program.

Chavez, naturally, threatens a veto.

Folks, this is your government in action — a circus of gotchas and getcha-backs and shell games full of competing numbers.

It's easy to rip Chavez on his sudden concern about finding flaws in the program, mostly because it's just like the mayor to go great guns on a concept — remember the Downtown arena or the Streetcar Named Cash? — until he finds his bedrock beliefs are built on electoral quicksand.

But Chavez has plenty of company in this mess. After all, didn't the City Council approve and fund the program in the first place? And isn't the City Council the same group that made itself a laughingstock this week when four members boycotted a meeting because they didn't like the perceived slap-and-tickle political chicanery of Councilor Brad Winter?

To show their displeasure with Winter, who somehow rose from Chavez's personal political doormat to council president in a single meeting, Councilors Sally Mayer, Trudy Jones, Don Harris and Ken Sanchez stomped their widdle feet outside and failed to vote on red-light cameras.

For that, they, and Chavez, deserve to squeeze themselves into my Acura (don't mind my son's aromatic gym bag, guys) while we crawl up and down Montgomery Boulevard at 35 mph.

Smile, kids. You're on TMZ.com!