The Tennessee House Transportation Committee yesterday drafted a legislative proposal that will solidify the legal standing for the use of both speed cameras and red light cameras in the state. After a lengthy markup process, committee members approved a two-year moratorium on new cameras while ensuring that there is no disruption in ticketing for cities like Chattanooga, Clarksville, Jonesborough and Knoxville that already have programs in place. In 2008, the state legislature quietly gave the green light to jurisdictions interested in installing red light cameras and speed cameras, but even the lawmakers most in favor of the use of cameras have been pressured by the public to take some action to reign in their use.

“This is a difficult issue for every one of us,” Representative Richard Floyd (R-Chattanooga) said. “We’ve got all of our local governments who want to do this, but if you put it on the ballot and you’d get blown out of the water with it.”

One representative calculated that 85 percent of the public was against cameras, and photo enforcement’s primary legislative advocate, Vice Chairman Vince Dean (R-East Ridge), agreed.

“As has been stated, the public don’t like these [cameras],” Dean said.

Over the past few months, city officials have mounted an unprecedented lobbying campaign to convince lawmakers to side with them over their constituents. The Transportation Committee devoted the vast majority of its time listening to these officials, giving far more limited and unfavorable time slots to just two members of the public to speak. As a result, the committee will impose no restrictions whatsoever on cities with existing photo enforcement contracts. A temporary moratorium would prevent new cities or counties from starting new programs, but there is no penalty for jurisdictions that rush to sign a contract before the proposal is signed into law, as several Texas cities did last year. Local jurisdictions — with the special exception for the lucrative “S-Curve” cameras in Hamilton County — would not be able to renew their contracts. Dean’s introduction of the S-Curve exemption raised some controversy.

“This reeks of Nebraska coming out of the health bill,” Representative Ben West Jr (D-Hermitage) said, explaining his support for the move. “But I’ll second yours and I’ll take that as a commitment that one day you’ll second me concerning Nashville.”

The proposed bill would ask the state comptroller to audit existing camera programs to ensure all money is properly accounted for. Beginning in 2012, the state transportation department would verify that all reasonable engineering solutions have been attempted before the installation of any new automated ticketing machines. Cities would no longer be allowed to charge more than $10 in court fees. Attempts to direct all profit from photo ticketing programs to trauma centers failed as did a move to ban speed cameras on state highways.

Committee staff are expected to finalize the legislative language for a committee vote prior to House action on the measure.

Accidents rose after the installation of a red light camera at one major intersection in Baytown, Texas. The private company American Traffic Solutions began issuing automated tickets at the intersection of Garth and Baker Roads on March 21, 2008. Since then, safety has not improved at the controversial camera location.

According to a brochure published by the city, “red light safety cameras” were installed because, “There have been more than 1,000,000 accidents and more than 1000 deaths attributed to red light runners that occur each year in the United States.” Presumably, the cameras are meant to reduce the number of collisions and deaths at Baytown intersections.

This has not happened according to accident reports from all three monitored approaches of the Garth and Baker intersection from eighteen months before the installation of cameras compared to the same period afterward. Instead, the total number of collisions grew by 11 percent. Although proponents of cameras frequently suggest that the increase in rear end collisions (31 percent in this case) is offset by the reduction in “more serious” collisions, the data show, to the contrary, that there was no reduction at all in the number of serious injury accidents.

“Remember this when the city tells you it is about safety,” Baytown resident Byron Schirmbeck said. “Keep in mind this is the city’s own report.”

Schirmbeck requested the accident data after noticing that the city had claimed a 63 percent accident reduction at the intersection in its report to the state department of transportation. He found the numbers hard to believe.

Schirmbeck has also twice caught the city shortening the yellow warning time in order to increase ticketing revenue at the same intersection. In June, he challenged the city for using a 3.1 second yellow timing, a value that was set just before camera installation after a “synchronization study.” After the short yellow was exposed, the city was forced the city to increase the timing to the legal minimum of 4.5 seconds. In July, however, the city shortened the yellow to just 4.0 seconds and justified the move by installing a 40 MPH speed limit sign on the 45 MPH road. As of now, the city has replaced the lowered speed limit sign and increased the yellow to the bare minimum allowable time of 4.5 seconds.

Schirmbeck is circulating a petition to put the question of whether red light cameras should be banned to the voters. Earlier this month, College Station residents voted to ban automated enforcement. ATS deactivated its cameras in that city yesterday.

A copy of the accident data is available in a 1mb PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Baker and Garth Accident Reports (City of Baytown, Texas, 11/24/2009)

[courtesy:thenewspaper.com]

A judge yesterday forced the settlement of a traffic camera company-backed lawsuit with the city of College Station, Texas over the public’s November 3 vote to ban red light cameras. Although terms of the deal have not been released, the city council voted 4-0 on November 11 to abide by the results of the election, leaving American Traffic Solutions (ATS) with no hope of continuing its ticketing program without a costly legal battle.

ATS had used its front group, the Keep College Station Safe Political Action Committee (PAC), to hire the lawfirm that won a temporary restraining order forbidding the city from implementing the initiative approved by voters. The company-backed lawsuit argued that the November 3 vote was invalid because the petition placing the measure on the ballot had been filed more than 600 days too late. Under city rules, an “initiative” petition to create a new ordinance has no deadlines, but a “referendum” petition to overturn an existing ordinance has a tight, twenty-day deadline. ATS-backed representatives argued that the petition was a referendum, not an initiative.
City Attorney Harvey Cargill agreed with this assessment and at first attempted to throw the case by filing a response to the lawsuit stating that the city, in effect, did not care which way the judge ruled. City leaders, seeing the political consequences of disregarding the will of voters, forced Cargill to hire the Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta LLP law firm as outside counsel. Attorney C. Robert Heath on Thursday filed a far more impressive response to the ATS-backed suit, citing the state supreme court’s standing interpretation of election law.
“The court explained that the policy behind requiring petitions as a prerequisite to calling certain elections is to provide a mechanism to insure that an election will not be called unless there is some indication that there is a desire of a significant proportion of the electorate for the change requested and that, if an election is called, there will be a reasonable possibility that the measure will pass,” Heath argued. “Once the election has occurred, however, the question of the process of calling the election is of little or no continual relevance since the people will have spoken, and the court’s primary concern will become to uphold the expressed will of the people.”
Heath cited the long-standing precedent established by the Texas Supreme Court decision Scarborough v. Eubank.
“The object of a popular election is that the will of the greater number of voters may prevail,” the high court wrote in Scarborough. “Hence the important matter in every election is that the will of the voters should be fairly expressed, correctly declared, and legally enforced. Compared to this, the question as to the manner and time of ordering the election is of trivial moment.”
The November 3 election in College Station was well-publicized and each ballot was clearly marked “For Ordinance bans cameras” and “Against Ordinance allows cameras.” A majority of residents selected the option to ban cameras. The city council will meet Monday at 7pm to ratify the settlement.

[courtesy:thenewspaper.com]

Check out GM’s complete video of the conference here.

Though New York’s new “Empire Gold” license plates aren’t opening the same constitutional can of worms as South Carolina’s recently-rejected “I Believe” plates, they’re still generating some feisty political opposition. By next April, every licensed vehicle in the state will have to switch to the new plates, at $25 a pop. That’s ten bucks more per plate than the previous models, and keeping your previous number or vanity plate will cost an additional $20. The switch is estimated to raise $129m for the state, which is currently facing a $5b budget shortfall. But according to Newsday, some 57,000 New Yorkers have signed a petition at nonewplates.com, expressing their displeasure with the new plates and their fees. Best of all, the new plates will mean new jobs for 120 inmates in New York’s penal system. The inmates will be paid 42 cents per hour to produce the plates.