SUIT AIMS TO BLOCK MAYOR’S RED- LIGHT CAMERA DO- OVER
Mayor Rahm Emanuel should be stopped in his tracks from giving 1.5 million motorists a red- light camera ticket do- over because his after- the- fact fix to a problem with those tickets violates state law, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Two months after the City Council agreed to give drivers nailed by red- light and speed cameras a second chance to challenge their tickets, plaintiffs’ attorney Jacie Zolna wants a Cook County judge to overturn the ordinance.
A judge has ruled — and the city has acknowledged — that it denied due process to the 1.5 million motorists by failing to send those drivers a second notice of their violations. The Emanuel administration further erred by imposing $ 100 late fees.
In September, aldermen agreed to correct those “procedural errors” in hopes it would bolster the city’s case against a lawsuit with the potential to force the city to refund $ 200 million in fines and late fees dating back to the 2003 inception of the scandal- scarred redlight camera program.
The lawsuit maintains the mayor’s ordinance is “at odds with virtually every procedural requirement” of the Illinois Vehicle Code and “completely undermines its purpose to ensure the ‘ fair and efficient’ adjudication” of speed and red light camera violations.
“The city . . . cannot willynilly change its own laws to give itself a second opportunity to extract fines and penalties from its citizens,” the lawsuit states.
Law Department spokesman Bill McCaffrey called the lawsuit “baseless.”
“It is clear that the notices of violation for each of the violations affected by the 2016 ordinance are valid under the Illinois Vehicle Code and the Municipal Code of Chicago, and the suit is challenging an ordinance that can only benefit the individuals represented in the suit,” McCaffrey said in an email.
If the city issues second notices, motorists will have 30 days to choose whether to appear before an administrative hearing officer and challenge their tickets on grounds they were issued in error.
The five- year window — March 23, 2010, to May 14, 2015 — is tied to the statute of limitations and the date the city eliminated the second notice requirement in yet another, after- the- fact attempt to avoid liability.
Zolna and his partner Myron Cherry have branded the ordinance “too little, too late” that will only invite more litigation and “add another chapter” to a red- light program built on a $ 2 million bribery scandal.
“For over a decade, the city failed to follow their own rules in providing people the proper notice. Then, they sped up liabilities and doubled fines prematurely. And here we are again. They get caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and all they want to do is keep changing the rules,” Zolna said.