81st Legislature Regular Session

This little book contains all the State Representatives and Legislators and their respective committees.....somewhat like a little "black book."


Red light cameras, red light cameras, red light cameras!

That seems to be a hot topic again with the folks down in Austin, again, this legislative session.

For those of you that don't know, the legislative folks meet every two years from January to about June in Austin to hear a ton of bills and decide what will make it past committees, to the House, then the Senate, then eventually become laws that we have to then implement and follow.

The last session, I still had a boss in my office and she did all the traveling to Austin required to go and represent our city and program against people wanting to do away with the red light cameras.

Since that changed about a year and a half ago, I am basically the only one in the office along with our hearing officer. Needless to say, we started "watching" four bills that had been presented, and we are up to maybe, oh I don't know, 8 or 10 that are "out there somewhere."

I got an opportunity to go down to Austin for the first time on April 2nd to hear a bill presented by my all time favorite person - Carl Issett - that if passed, would prohibit cities from running red light cameras.

The hearing was scheduled for 10:30 a.m. before the Urban Affairs Committee. We flew out Thursday morning from Love Field at 7:30 and arrived in Austin a little after 8:00 a.m.

We went down to our lobbyist office on Congress and gathered all our stuff together that we'd be presenting while we enjoyed the breath-taking view of the Austin skyline from the 19th floor.

I have to back track and just say that I was coming along to basically see what all goes on when these bills are presented before the various committees. Since I've been involved in the program (all alone), I've had issues getting over my nerves and speaking in public to make presentations. My first brief exposure was last year when we spoke before our local City Council and I barely said 3 words and thought I was going to die. Now, my problem is not speaking, because I can do that just fine - it is doing it before a handful of people. I have this deathly fear of forgetting everything or saying something so wrong.

So anyways, I knew even before I left Garland, that I would not be speaking. The first things I quickly discovered was that consider yourself lucky that you are on someones agenda, but after that, don't hold your breath to them hearing your bill on the scheduled time. Again, we were scheduled for 10:30 that morning.

To make a long story short, we get told around 2:00 p.m. to go ahead and head down to the committee room - so we did. It wasn't until 5:30 that our bill was even presented. Because this was the "big one," we had about 40 people there from various cities either to speak on the bill or that had just signed the petition card (which is what I did - in opposition of the bill).

Needless to say, I think we had the floor for about an hour and a half when the Chairperson decided to put ours off to the side and hear several smaller bills that were pending. Those smaller bills turned into about 10 more. Just to point out what all is presented before these committees, let me just say, I learned the distinction between a black and a red fire hydrant - yes people, as long as you can find a sponsor, you can present bills before these committees.

Anyways, they finally took us back up around 7:15 and at around 8:20 p.m., we were finally out of there only to have the bill left in "pending" status, which means it will probably die in the committee and not go anywhere.

We ended up having to cancel our 7:20 flight and luckily the Assistant Chief drove down there so we came back with him...via land. I got home at 12:30 a.m on Friday morning - tired as hell.

I must say although the day was extremely long and we did a lot of sitting and listening to a number of other bills, when it came time for ours, a certain person got me so upset (not crying) more like mad - that I decided I had too much to say to let my speaking fear get the best of me.

I promised myself I would be speaking at the next hearing no matter if I had to be removed from the podium in a stretcher.

I am too passionate and a true believer that red light cameras work and that they are not just sources of revenue. Take it from someone who sees these violations day in and day out and then watches the news to hear of horrible accidents caused by red light runners, to tell you, this is a big problem.