Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer Jamie Spencer (see how I worked that in for you?) found this article from the  Orange County Register about cars registered to employees of 1800 state and local governmental agencies get a free pass from traffic violations.  The reason, according to  Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer Jamie Spencer (did it again), is:

An Orange County Register investigation has found that the program, designed 30 years ago to protect police from criminals, has been expanded to cover hundreds of thousands of public employees – from police dispatchers to museum guards – who face little threat from the public. Their spouses and children can get the plates, too…

While the article primarily addresses the loss of revenue, while the bills mount for those motorists who made the mistake of not having a civil servant in the family, there is an institutional problem at stake here that should not go unnoticed.

Arguably, the original rationale for concealing the identity of certain motorists (i.e., cops) make sense.  If personal information, such as home address and family members, of police officers was readily available, it would subject them to huge potential personal risk for doing their jobs.  While this would theoretically allow them to ignore inconvenient laws on their own time, we would hope that they, as law enforcement officers, would make the affirmative choice to comply with the laws.  In any event, the risk of harm to police is reasonably viewed as more important than collecting the occasional traffic fine.

Thus, the rubric is born, reasonably connect to its rationale.  So far, no problem.

But then others in the service of the People saw the benefit, and said, “me too!”  Without researching the details, let’s assume that next it was judges (“angry defendant’s could come after us”) and court personnel (“us too, us too!”).  Then the people at the Department of Motor Vehicles (“everybody hates us”) until it reached the local water district repair person. 

In due course, the argument becomes, “hey, they get it.  I want it too!”  It shifts from being an appropriate means of protecting against a rational threat to a basic perk of the job.  The local water district repair person asks, “why should they get it and not me?”  The answer is that it ultimately becomes a bargaining chip, without a particular associated cost (making it the kind of chip that government negotiators love).  Even though there’s a loss of traffic violation fine revenue, that comes out of somebody else’s budget line, and no governmental unit cares a whit about anybody else’s budget line.

The problem, obviously, is that the rubric is now disconnected from the rationale.  The reason behind the rule has since been forgotten, and the rule is then applied to people in way that cannot be justified.  It’s gone beyond its logical extreme.

But there’s another issue at stake, and this goes to the nature of government.  There are two views of government service that are decidedly different.  One is the view that people who work for government are public servants.  The other is that they are employees or “leaders”, according to where they are on the food chain.  While the words “public servant” are still used from time to time when helpful, the concept is largely a fiction. 

Public servants, in theory, hold their positions in government in order to serve the people, to fulfill the mission of government.  When is the last time you felt that government was deeply concerned with fulfilling its mission toward you?  For most of us, government has become the monolith on the other side of the table from the People.  We need it to do some things, and we fight it to keep it under some degree of control.

Few examples make this clearer than the perk given the employees, and their families, of 1800 governmental agencies.  It’s a perk of the job, and the job just happens to be working for a governmental agency.  You can’t blame them for wanting the benefit.  Who wouldn’t?  But there’s no connection between serving the public and beating red lights at will.