News but Not News from the ABC7 News I-Team: MUNI’s Broken Surveillance Cameras

Yikes!
Ok, we all knew the state of repair of Muni’s cameras was bad, between anectdotal comments on many blogs and recent events involving crime on muni. But reading the records revealed by the ABC7 “ITeam” today about just how badly in need these cameras are of repair or replacements is rather sobering. (Update: the SF Appeal also had a story about this too).
I’m glad the ITeam is willing to go through the legal hassles to get Muni (or any agency) to disclose to the public, um, what it’s supposed to disclose to the public via records requests. The more complicated answer is “Why?”
Now, I’m sure blogville can come up with about a million suppositions (mine being that it would seem if you keep cutting Muni’s budgets by 100s of millions of dollars, at least some of those cuts will come from maintenance), but I don’t want any more of that.
If no one at the MTA, the MTA Board, the “Mayor’s” Office or the Board can either come up with the “why” this is happening or a “how” we might fix it, then they all need to be banished to The Village and we need some people who will start taking a “can-do” attitude.
As it stands, the price we’re paying for crappy cameras is way too high.
UPDATE: After I posted this I was talking about this with a neighbor, and they made a bigger point – we just had a Big News Conference about safety, where all the Big Jay Journalists were there (mostly asking about that F*CKING YouTube video), and this information was apparently available, but not revealed.
This, in the wake of (as the Appeal points out) a Big News Conference with our “Mayor” about gov’t data tranparency.
Cue “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme music…..