RELATED STORIES

• City may turn off cameras
• City might shut down some red-light cameras, leave equipment up

Related Links

• Map of red light cameras

More Local

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
• Former Marine to serve two years in jail for killing Albuquerque robber
• Wilson-Pearce battle for U.S. Senate exemplifies party's disparity

MOST RECENT TRIB STORIES

• ABQTrib.com to remain available
  08:48 a.m., February 25, 2008
• Congressman is indicted
  08:37 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Series of attacks target Green Zone
  08:36 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Iran is defying U.N., agency says
  08:35 a.m., February 23, 2008
• Waterboarding approval probed
  08:34 a.m., February 23, 2008

TRIB IN THE BLOGOSPHERE*

• Ty Murray Invitational thrills fans in Albuquerque
• Is Rome Burning?
• Ominous Skies
• The Road to Invalidation
• Albuquerque company participates in “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

*Note: The Tribune does not create and is not responsible for the blogosphere's headlines and stories. These links to blogs talking about ABQTrib.com are automatically generated. Use them at your own risk.

STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

SHARE THIS STORY [?]

The public debate over Albuquerque's red-light cameras has focused on select numbers: $100 citations, a proposed $74 state cut, a supposed 8 percent decrease in traffic accidents.

But a much larger number also caught legislators' attention this year as they pushed ahead with several bills aimed at the controversial program: $500,000.

aboaut the decline since 2001 in the traffic-citation fees collected at Metro Court, which are used to pay off the bill for the courthouse's construction.

That decline, a 25 percent drop in the court's contribution to a state fund that pays off the construction bonds, mirrors a similar decline in traffic citations filed in Metro Court in the same period.

The shortfall led the Legislature to appropriate $950,000 this year to keep the bond fund afloat.

And officials say it also led legislators to ask: Were Albuquerque's red-light cameras, which assess civil fines that don't include the state criminal fees, leading officers to hand out fewer of the traffic citations that do include the fees?

Absolutely not, Albuquerque police say. Department spokesman John Walsh said APD officers wrote 234,731 traffic citations - the kind that contribute to the construction fund - in 2005, the first full year of the red-light program. In 2006, officers issued 238,027.

"Our officers are enforcing traffic laws the same way they always have," Walsh said, adding citations have steadily increased since 2000.

That, of course, raises a question: Why are traffic citations down in Metro Court if APD officers - who account for the vast majority of cases filed in that court - are handing out more tickets?

"I can't account for the discrepancy," Metro Court spokeswoman Janet Blair said. "But we've seen a decline in citations."

At the Administrative Office of the Courts, which collects the fees assessed on traffic citations across the state, Director Artie Pepin said the decline in citations was likely the result of several factors. The largest, he said, was a shortage of officers at most law enforcement agencies and a resulting shift away from traffic enforcement.

But APD has added about 200 officers to its force since 2000, Walsh said.

Another explanation floated during the Legislature, Pepin said, was that the practice of holding expedited traffic arraignments at Metro Court was leading to a large number of case dismissals.

The traffic arraignment program, which started in 2002, encourages people to resolve their traffic cases by entering into a plea agreement with an assistant city attorney. Police officers then don't have to attend the hearings, saving the department overtime pay.

Blair said the city will often dismiss one or more citations in exchange for a guilty plea on another citation, but added the same thing happens in plea agreements on all sorts of cases.

Dismissals haven't increased under the traffic arraignment program, she said.

City Attorney Bob White also defended the program.

"We're doing what the courts have asked us to do, which is dispose of cases at arraignment," he said.

Whatever the exact combination of causes, the declining revenue from traffic citations isn't isolated to Metro Court.

Collection of the bond fee by the Motor Vehicle Division, which gets money from people who don't ask for a court date on their citations, has declined by about the same rate as at Metro Court.

Collections at Magistrate Courts across the state also declined since 2001, but at the lower rate of about 3 percent.

The fee - technically known as a facility fee - is only one of several costs tacked on to traffic tickets, most misdemeanor crimes and many civil filings. In Bernalillo County, the fee is $24; elsewhere in the state, it's $10.

Those fees flow into a fund designed to cover the approximately $4.6 million annual bond payments for Metro Court.

In fiscal year 2001, the facility fees added up to about $6 million, but by 2006 the amount had dropped to just less than $5 million.

To be considered solvent, the bond fund must contain 120 percent of the annual payment, or about $5.6 million, Pepin said.

"We'd fallen well below that, and that's why we had to go to the Legislature," he said.

The $950,000 is a recurring appropriation, but, Pepin said, some legislators felt the state's general fund shouldn't have to subsidize bonds for Bernalillo County and began to look at the red-light program, which is generating millions of dollars a year, as a welcome balm.

"The Legislature asked if we could show that the red-light cameras have contributed to the decline," Pepin said. "In the end, we said, `We can't.' But revenue is clearly declining more precipitously in Bernalillo County than elsewhere in the state. We can't say how much of that is because of the cameras."

A look at the statistics, however, suggests an answer: apparently not very much.

In Fiscal Year 2002, revenues from facility fees at Metro Court fell by 8 percent from the year before. The next year, they fell another 5 percent. They fell 12 percent the year after that.

After a 6 percent recovery in Fiscal Year 2005, revenues again dropped by 6 percent in Fiscal Year 2006, the first year of the red-light program. Revenues are expected to drop by another 4.5 percent by the end of this fiscal year in June.

Meanwhile, the legislation that would force the city to turn over $74 out of every $100 collected through the red-light program to the state is pending an audience with Gov. Bill Richardson.

Richardson's spokesman, Gilbert Gallegos, said the governor hasn't had a chance to review that bill or another that would require the city to install rumble strips ahead of red-light camera intersections.

Gallegos said Richardson has heard from Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez, who has said the city would have to shut down the program if the state starts taking a 74 percent cut.

Richardson, who is campaigning out of state until Thursday, has until April 6 to decide whether to sign the bills.