OPINION:
Beware lawmakers who cloak their skulduggery in the language of reform. Virginia’s House of Delegates voted 55-45 last week to pass a measure radically expanding the use of speed cameras while claiming to do the opposite.
“It puts guardrails on a program that already exists,” Delegate Holly Seibold testified on her bill in a state House Transportation Committee hearing. “The status quo has no guardrails in place.”
The first tipoff that the Fairfax Democrat is up to no good can be found in her choice of words. As passed, her bill replaced the term “photo speed monitoring device” with the propaganda phrase “speed safety camera.”
It’s a subtle change intended to divert attention from the $90 million Ms. Seibold said was extracted from the pockets of the commonwealth’s drivers last year. When the General Assembly first allowed the use of these machines, the effort was confined to school zones. Then, highway work zones were added.
Now, Mrs. Seibold is pushing to add any road with a speed limit of 45 mph or less, as long as it’s labeled a “pedestrian risk” area. Her legislation also opens the program to any two-bit, revenue-hungry town by eliminating the restriction preventing jurisdictions without police departments from setting up automated speed traps.
Since politicians realize these schemes are unpopular, the proposal’s expansionary aim is concealed behind the addition of a half-dozen meaningless constraints, not one of which alters existing practice.
For instance, the bill mandates that the accused be provided information about contesting a violation notice. That sounds great, except this condition is satisfied if the locality “provides a link on its website and social media accounts to the website of the private vendor.” That’s window dressing, not reform.
Many drivers have concluded that contesting tickets is a waste of time and have discarded citations received in the mail without consequence. According to the latest Virginia State Police report, a third of the 326,614 tickets issued by the for-profit contractors were ignored in 2023. Under a legal settlement reached a decade ago, such nonpayment can’t be reported to credit rating agencies.
In theory, localities could force the issue by dispatching a process server to deliver each notice in person. With 125,000 tickets tossed into the garbage each year, that will not happen. There’s also no time. Existing law requires the purging of unserved citations after 30 days.
Vendors insisted on the evidence destruction provision to prevent the sort of forensic auditing that revealed how Baltimore’s speed cameras were harassing innocent people. In 2014, the city’s inspector general uncovered serious flaws despite the difficulty of obtaining data.
“It was revealed that multiple vehicles and cross traffic were interfering with the enforcement equipment and causing erroneous speed readings. … However, citations with errors due to known radar effects were continually passed on to the City and eventually to the motorist,” the investigation concluded.
Accuracy is irrelevant because the goal is raising money. The existing statute says the proceeds from photo fines “shall be paid into the Literary Fund,” as the state constitution requires. The new legislation instead funnels the loot into a state slush fund, with the local jurisdiction expecting to receive its cut in the form of grants.
The state Senate has until Thursday to take up House Bill 2041 for it to have a chance of reaching Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s desk. If it does, he should veto this unconstitutional cash grab.
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