NY County Admits Cameras Are For Revenue

by The Newspaper

Published: October 29th, 2008

ny county admits cameras are for revenue

In a four-hundred-page review of Suffolk County, New York’s financial situation released earlier this month, officials highlight the rationale for adding automated traffic enforcement devices. “At this point the County needs to make hard decisions,” the 2009 county budget review states. “Do we raise property taxes? Do we seek state approval to raise the overall sales tax rate? …Do we raise revenue from traffic tickets by instituting red light cameras?” Yes, well, county cannot install red light cameras without first obtaining permission from the state legislature. Since 2001, Albany’s frustrated the county’s attempts to convince lawmakers in Albany to grant this authority. Photo enforcement supporters believe that support from Governor David Patterson (D) will finally deliver the changes in state law needed to begin operations. The county has even begun taking steps to establish a parking violations bureau to handle the photo tickets.

“You know, we’ve been trying to get this legislation passed forever,” Suffolk County Legislature Presiding Officer William Lindsay explained in a February meeting. “And this year it was put in the governor’s suggested legislative package, so we’re very hopeful that it will get passed… if we don’t establish the Parking Violations Bureau, we don’t get the revenue.” Another of the county’s elected lawmakers, Kate Browning, at a September meeting pointed to the reason behind the governor’s support.”What this letter (from Governor Patterson) is saying is that we could gain $3.5 million in annual revenue from the red light camera program,” Browning said.

For the past two years Suffolk County has actually included this amount in its official budget projections, expecting state lawmakers would concede to their request. This turned out to be a costly mistake. “County Executive Tom Suozzi put it in his budget last year for revenue, it never came through,” Deputy County Executive Ben Zwirn said at a September 18 meeting. “There’s a hole in the budget because of that. He’s put it in his budget again this year.”

[click here for the full story from thenewspaper.com]

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2 of 19 comments

Jjklongisland on Oct 30, 2008

Wow, lots of L.I. bashers on here. While I agree it is expensive to live on Long Island there is also many great things about the island. Most of your high taxes pay for some of the best education a child can get and a top notch volunteer Fire/EMS service, along with beautiful parks, historical towns and tons of jobs. There beaches are excellent, infastructure is vast and the close proximity to arguably the Best City in the world is also some of the reasons why it is expensive to live here. That being said I am not trying to start a debate on why Long Island is great yada yada, I just am defending where I live and trying to shed some light on why it is so expensive. The wage paid on Long Island is alot higher than most of the nation so it is all relative. Now regarding the article. Red light cameras have been studied and some statistics show that more accidents occur at these intersections than prior to the camera being installed. I think installing red light cameras for the purpose of generating revenue is just more fuel for the allready corrupt political agenda.

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Fallout11 on Oct 31, 2008

MMMmmmm, revenue enforcement. In days of old, unwary travelers would sometimes be bushwhacked along their route by revenue-seeking bandits. Times haven't changed much, have they?

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