Red Light Cameras Big Issue In Local Elections

Tuesday is election day all over Illinois.

In some local races, red light cameras are such a heated issue, a few candidates are making RLCs the major part of their campaign.

Up in Chicago’s 45th ward, while not the major issue of the race, John Garrido a police officer and lawyer is opposed to RLC, while his opponent John Arena supports the cameras saying they improve safety and bring in much needed revenue for the city according to the Sun-Times.

In East Dundee, two candidate for trustee are completely opposed to RLC. In fact, Patrick Clarke and Allen Skillicorn, are both opposed to adding a third camera and want to kill of the town’s RLC program altogether.

“Fining motorists $100 for rolling too far past a line is a highly regressive tax and hurts lower income families,” says Skillicorn. Before running for trustee, Skillicorn started a civic group called Grassroots Revolution to “expose scientific evidence disproving the safety benefits of these cameras”.

Gurnee, according to the Gurnee News Sun newspaper, has a political party aptly named the Red Light Cameras Party, opposed to RLC in Gurnee. The party made up of current Gurnee trustee Greg Garner who’s running for re-election along with candidates for trustee, Heath Hummel and Matt Koch.

Out in Fox River Grove, two candidates are running against red light cameras. Incumbent Steven Knar and Chester Olencheck are pledging to get rid of the town’s RLC program if elected.

Perhaps the most notorious anti-RLC candidate up for election Tuesday is Brian Costin, running for Mayor of Schaumburg. Costin made his name in politics when he was credited with shutting down Schaumburg’s red light camera program.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>