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Red Light, Green Light

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In Houston, by contrast, lawmakers spent years trying to pass legislation to secure cameras. With the final hurdle cleared last winter, Texas' largest city began a months-long process of reviewing vendors, going so far as to require competing companies to install test systems at various intersections.

In Chicago, meanwhile, Alderman Thomas Allen says it took nearly six months of public hearings and political wrangling before the Windy City signed off on traffic cameras. Chicago then spent nearly a year reviewing vendors before installing the first devices in 2004.

Apprised of the stepped-up schedule in St. Louis, Allen exclaims, "Whoa! That sounds like old-time Chicago politics. What's up with that?"

Even as the company was laying the civic groundwork in St. Louis, ATS was courting a smaller, less bureaucratic market: the city of Arnold. Working with the chief of police and the city attorney, the ATS consultants successfully steered the requisite ordinance through the city council in a single day last June. The following month, ATS won the contract.

"Of course, we were in contact with [ATS] when drafting the ordinance," confirms Arnold City Attorney Bob Sweeney, who says he received draft legislation for the ordinance from Stinson Morrison Hecker attorney Jane Dueker.

Competitors say the ATS-drafted ordinance was subtly slanted to help ensure that Arnold would award the contract to ATS. The key element: a provision in the ordinance requiring that the city choose a vendor that uses a single camera to record red-light runners. Several of ATS' rivals rely on multiple cameras. Though it is a matter of debate as to which technology is better, ATS' competitors say it's extremely unusual to place specific requirements of this kind in an ordinance.

"That's an issue for the selection committee to decide," asserts Redflex's Mark Etzbach. "To have those requirements in the ordinance is extremely odd."

Sweeney counters that if the ordinance was biased in ATS' favor, none of the losing bidders ever complained about it.

"I'm ignorant and remain ignorant to this day on the technological aspects of these cameras," Sweeney admits. "Nothing is perfect, but I believe we drafted and adopted the ordinance in the right way."

Dueker, meanwhile, defends placing the single-camera provision in the ordinance she provided Sweeney, claiming evidence gathered from such systems hold up better in court. Besides, she says, it's not as though she forced Arnold to base its ordinance on the draft legislation she provided.

"Municipalities have their own lawyers who can look at the ordinance," Dueker points out. "So it's kind of irrelevant what I put in. If they don't want it, they can take it out."

Last week the city of Springfield approved an ordinance also based on ATS' draft legislation, says Springfield City Attorney Dan Wichmer. The city first learned of ATS, adds Wichmer, when Bob Holden called on its behalf last summer.

Unlike Arnold and Springfield, where city officials freely admit ATS helped draft their ordinances, public officials in St. Louis aren't saying much about how their legislation came about. In fact, they say they don't know.

City Counselor Hageman won't say who authored the ordinance, and refers questions to the mayor's office.

"Who did what over the past year that precisely led to this particular bill, I couldn't tell you," offers Slay chief of staff Rainford.

Dueker says she sent a draft ordinance to the city counselor's office last summer but can't remember whether she followed up with city officials.

Regardless, the mayor's office made the bill a legislative priority and tapped well-connected mover and shaker Lou Hamilton to tout it to elected officials. A private lobbyist on a $2,000-per-month retainer with the city, Hamilton began floating the bill among the Board of Aldermen in early October.

Why the need for a private lobbyist when the mayor's staff includes a full-time lobbyist, Jim Sondermann, at an annual salary of $82,000?

"Because Lou is one of the best," Rainford explains. "When we have very difficult issues, or even moderately difficult issues, we use Lou."

Hamilton evidently did his job well. When Third Ward Alderman Freeman Bosley Sr. introduced the bill on October 14, 21 out of 29 board members signed on as co-sponsors, and it was smooth sailing from there.

"The way it was presented to me is that the mayor was on board with this, and it was a good idea for the city," Bosley explains. "Also, the money from this would go back to the city to fund programs for abused women and things like that."

But contrary to Bosley's understanding, Rainford says the city is not expecting any compensation whatsoever from the cameras.

"This isn't supposed to be a high-tech speed trap," says Rainford. "We're going to do this for only the most dangerous of intersections to improve public safety."

One of the few aldermen not to sponsor the bill, board president Jim Shrewsbury says he does not know why the city chose the police department to put the camera contract out for bid.

"The obvious place to bid this would have been the treasurer's department, because this is what they do," Rainford explains. "They handle parking meters, which also go to the general revenue. But we didn't want this to be about revenue. We wanted the program to be about public safety. That's why the police department handled the bid."

Perhaps not coincidentally, it's easier to administer a public bid through the police department than through the city, where a litany of departments must sign off on such a purchase.

In early November, the police department placed a tiny ad in The City Journal, the city-government newsletter that boasts a weekly circulation of 345 copies. No other advertisements announced the request for proposals.

Major Paul Nocchiero, who serves as the final arbiter for police procurements, says the process followed department policy by advertising solely in the Journal and allowing bidders only ten days to respond.

A representative of Traffipax, a multibillion-dollar company based in Germany, says his firm's bid was sent back unopened.

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