Newark citizens are a money pit to be mined

The notion that government should be allowed to spy on citizen-drivers with robotic cameras was odious to many when first conceived by local governments in cahoots with robo-cop inventors.

About three years ago a plan was hatched by for-profit traffic enforcers - local and not - that would allow so-called "traffic safety cameras" to photograph cars running red lights and, in effect, issue tickets.

Local governments would rake in untold fortunes and camera vendors would skim off a pile of profit.

Folks howled and the state legislature responded. Then-Representative Dave Evans co-sponsored a bill - and then-Senator Jay Hottinger voted for its senate version - to prevent these scavengers from preying on drivers because, for one thing, these cameras record information that goes beyond the infraction and the plate number. And, by turning a profit for a vendor, this gig is not exclusively for the purpose of reducing violations. The bill mandated that a police officer operate the camera or at least be nearby. Think of the inconvenience.

Those bills passed both houses but was vetoed by our then-consistently-anti-citizen Governor Taft, so now this gig is legal in Ohio.

Seizing the moment - as he did on the auto-tax boost and the ride-to-the-hospital-in-city-vehicles-for-a-price - Newark Mayor Bob Diebold, who never passed up an opportunity to screw citizens if it meant an extra buck for the city treasury, is pumping the idea that Newark should team with Redflex Traffic Systems to give local drivers a $85-to-$125 chunk of grief for stop-light violations.

If the conspiracy works as it does in Dayton, Newark will keep just 35 percent of the profits for this plunder and the rest will go to the Scottsdale Arizona smoothies whose MO was recorded in USA Today under the title Smile! You're on a Redflex camera.

Key sentence in that report is this: "You've probably never heard of them, but Redflex may someday get to know you better than you'd like."

From just that much, Newark Ohio already knows it better than we'd like. Also, Newark Mayor Bob Diebold.