The bill addressing one Republican congressman's biggest pet peeve is closer to becoming law.
Photo-illustration by Alice Ashe with photographs by Evy Mages.
Scott Perry really has a bee in his bonnet about traffic cameras. Yesterday, his dream of fully banning them in DC got closer to reality.
The House Oversight Committee advanced a bill authored by Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican, which would eliminate the city’s 546 traffic cameras. It will also require DC to legalize right turns on red at every single intersection. This would even apply to intersections where right turns on red have been illegal since the invention of the automobile, according to DC Shadow Senator Ankit Jain.
Perry’s bill passed exactly along party lines in the Oversight Committee, which is responsible for legislative matters related to DC.
DC’s officials quickly condemned it. In a statement, Mayor Muriel Bowser pointed to the city’s expanded speed and red light camera system as one reason traffic fatalities fell by 52 percent here last year.
Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton’s office released a letter calling Perry’s bill undemocratic and paternalistic. “Yet again, Republicans are wasting time they should be using to solve significant problems facing the American people to instead address their pet peeves” her statement read.
In a letter to committee chairman James Comer signed by the entire DC Council, Council Chairperson Phil Mendelson wrote that “enactment of these restrictions will inevitably lead to more speeding, more dangerous driving, and more serious injuries on our roads.”
The city’s right turn restrictions also protect visitors to DC, Mendelson pointed out, more than 85 percent of whom never drive a car here.
The advancement out of committee doesn’t ensure that the speed camera ban becomes District law. First, House leadership needs to schedule a rules debate and full floor vote on it, which hasn’t always been a quick process. Of the 20 bills which have passed out of the Oversight Committee during this Congress, only about half have been voted on by the full House. And if the bill passes the House, it could be subject to a filibuster in the Senate.
At the same time though, a proposal from the US Department of Transportation to kill automated traffic enforcement in DC could also make it into the House surface transportation bill.
This multiple-front effort, along with Perry’s determination—the congressman had already inserted a traffic camera ban into an earlier bill to repeal DC’s Second Chance Amendment Act last year—are worrying for DC officials.
The cameras are controversial, even among Washingtonians. They brought in $267 million to DC’s general fund last year, and some, like the city’s most lucrative camera along I-66 near the Kennedy Center, can seem strategically placed for revenue rather than safety.
Privacy and equitability problems with the system are bipartisan. During yesterday’s markup session, some House Democrats voiced concerns about the vast amount of data collected by traffic cameras, and that some national legislation might be in order. But they agreed that Congress shouldn’t be meddling with DC policies.
Ranking member Robert Garcia said “I believe that the decisions for the District should be left for the District and the community.”
In the end, every Democrat on the committee voted against the bill, including moderates like California’s Dave Min, who has sometimes voted with Republicans on matters related to DC law.
Speed cameras are legal in Perry’s home state, but he’s been on a mission to ban their use by the District, which he says is “fleecing their residents.” In a January interview with Washingtonian, he admitted that he’d been nabbed by traffic cameras while driving in DC, including in one “uniquely infuriating” incident on Inauguration Day.
The District Department of Transportation hasn’t yet suggested publicly how it would respond to a ban, but things will begin to get more concerning for them if the bill reaches a full House vote.
“If the House is scheduling a vote on it, there’s a pretty good chance that they think that they have the votes to pass it,” Jain says. “They seem to be voting in lockstep to support federal intrusions and overreach on DC issues.”
Staff Writer
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.