Saturday, May 25, 2019

City Council Picks Your Pockets Again

The Greensboro City Council voted on Tuesday to bring back red light cameras. Meanwhile in Texas where redlight cameras have been in use for over 30 years:

"The reality is that cities use red light cameras as a source of revenue, not for public safety. In Chicago, Illinois, a former city official was sent to prison for taking bribes from a red light camera company. Chicago raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from the camera tickets, and at one point these machines appeared to be malfunctioning and sending out hundreds of tickets inappropriately."

And this:

"Some cities and states have pinned a lot of their budget numbers on this revenue, which creates some pretty twisted incentives. The Dallas Morning News notes that Dallas drew in nearly $6 million from red-light camera fines in 2018. Half of the money goes to the city. The other half gets directed toward trauma hospitals in the state.

But there's actually very little evidence that red light cameras actually improve public safety. Study after study often says the opposite, and some communities have stopped using them without being directed to by their state governments. HB 1631 in Texas will forbid the use of red light cameras across the state, and the evidence from these cameras cannot be used for charges or citations. The bill allows municipalities to honor their contracts with private camera operators until they expire, so it may be a few years before they disappear—in Fort Worth, the city contract runs through 2026. But the bill also forbids county and state official from refusing to register a car on the basis of having unpaid red-light camera tickets."


Why not share this so that friends and family can see what kind of people are really running Greensboro.