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Cities Fight Back Against Traffic Cam Restrictions in New State Transportation Budget

DAVE DUGDALE
/
LEARNINGDSLRVIDEO.COM
Ohio lawmakers have put strict new guidelines for cities using traffic cameras in the new transporation budget. Cities are fighting back.

It’s been a few years, but state lawmakers are trying again to put rules on local traffic cameras, which they’ve said communities are using to generate revenue rather than improve safety.

The new regulations are part of the same budget that would raise the state’s gas tax.

The House version of the transportation budget requires traffic camera disputes go through municipal courts instead of an administrative process, and would require cities that use cameras to report income from them, which would then be deducted from their state funds.

Keary McCarthy with the Ohio Mayors Alliancesaid this is an attempt to work around an Ohio Supreme Court decision upholding cities’ rights to operate camera programs, and it has no place in a budget that needs to be agreed upon by March 31.

“We can continue to debate the value of this policy," said McCarthy, "but having it included in what is already a difficult challenge in the transportation budget doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

And McCarthy suggests that legal action is possible if the provision remains in the transportation budget.

Karen is a lifelong Ohioan who has served as news director at WCBE-FM, assignment editor/overnight anchor at WBNS-TV, and afternoon drive anchor/assignment editor in WTAM-AM in Cleveland. In addition to her daily reporting for Ohio’s public radio stations, she’s reported for NPR, the BBC, ABC Radio News and other news outlets. She hosts and produces the Statehouse News Bureau’s weekly TV show “The State of Ohio”, which airs on PBS stations statewide. She’s also a frequent guest on WOSU TV’s “Columbus on the Record”, a regular panelist on “The Sound of Ideas” on ideastream in Cleveland, appeared on the inaugural edition of “Face the State” on WBNS-TV and occasionally reports for “PBS Newshour”. She’s often called to moderate debates, including the Columbus Metropolitan Club’s Issue 3/legal marijuana debate and its pre-primary mayoral debate, and the City Club of Cleveland’s US Senate debate in 2012.