22 years ago, I had the pleasure of carrying a ballot initiative to the voters of Anchorage that rolled back Mark Begich’s photo radar, his and the Assembly’s law enforcement for profit, tax farming scheme. Along with it was a defenestration of the predatory Anchorage Parking Authority which was raking in the neighborhood of $2 million a year in untraceable, unaccountable cash for parking tickets. We won a narrow 52 – 48% victory having been outspent by the Muni roughly $80,000 – 6,000.
The important point we made, and the voters of Anchorage agreed with was that law enforcement ought not to be a money-making operation.
Over the last couple decades, that consensus held pretty well, until it didn’t. First strike was Dan Sullivan in 2011 who removed the wooden stake from the black little heart of the Parking Authority, newly renamed as EasyPark, and allowed them to enforce parking laws once again by starting to write tickets downtown. The operation was billed as a kinder and gentler approach. But it didn’t take very long for the old complaints to start once again.
The other shoe dropped at the May 21 Assembly meeting, as a unanimous Assembly vote created another revenue generating law, this one a ban on handheld cell phone use in school zones. It was passed with a 9 – 0 vote, with AT&T employee Suzanne LaFrance abstaining.
The ordinance is applicable in active School zones, defined as school zones with signage, between the hours of 0600 – 2100, on days school is in session. Hands free cell phone usage is acceptable for now. You are only allowed to use a cell phone to call 911. The Assembly specifically removed exceptions for calls to emergency response, hospital, fire department, health clinic, doctor, first aid or a police department. Violators will be fined $500 a pop. Note that the time limits for this do not coincide with the flashing yellow lights at all. This is a feature rather than a bug. Nothing like sowing a little confusion among the driving public to ensure more tickets are written by our newly designate tax collectors with APD.
What problem do our esteemed public servants deign to solve? As with Photo Radar, they are out to save The Children from all manner of badness, specifically accidental injury due to distracted driving by Anchorage drivers blasting willy-nilly through school zones.
The actual numbers in the ordinance are eye opening (not):
- 100 children nationwide each year are struck by vehicles in school zones. None of these cited were in Anchorage.
- Numerous reports of near accidents involving drivers on cell phones in Anchorage school zones. No actual numbers of these incidents are listed nor was there a breakdown of when, where, what time of year, or who were making the complaints.
- 54 total citations by APD issued Jan 2017 – March 2019 for driving a motor vehicle device operating. These include texting while driving, likely the majority of the violations.
- Finally, only four, count, ‘em FOUR of those citations were issued in school zones over that same 15-month period, roughly one every four months.
My guess is that the number of citations written will increase exponentially as Ethan and this Assembly root around for something useful for their shiny new 550 cops to do. With this new revenue raising tool in their back pocket, APD is no longer in the law enforcement business. Rather, they are now tax farming for revenue to run the Muni with.
Tax farming is historically a poisonous activity for any government to get into. It was the underlying reason for the Ferguson MO riots in 2014. An entrenched democrat local government figured out how to fund their operation by writing tons of tickets, tons of violation tickets for zoning, and other artificial violations, and then hammering the citizens with ticket fees and court fees when they went to court to fight the theft. Note that the citizens, like Anchorage residents fighting Parking Authority tickets two decades ago, rarely to never won. As the city fathers in Ferguson were white and most of the residents were black, the festivities were reported as a racial thing. It wasn’t. It was predatory law enforcement for profit. Chicago, another entrenched democrat machine does the same thing with seized vehicles.
And we here in Anchorage just took a large step down that road. Gonna be really difficult to respect local police if they are writing tickets to fund themselves and the Muni. Gonna be really difficult to respect either the law or order if they are using that power to steal from you. And you shouldn’t.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
