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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Ind. Law - Still more on "Red light cameras legal?"
Updating this ILB entry from June 8th, Susan Brown of the NWI Times reports today in a story that begins:
HAMMOND | Concerned about the city's adoption of red-light cameras, City Clerk Robert Golec said he will raise the issue at this week's annual conference of the Indiana League of Municipal Clerks and Treasurers.Golec said he questions whether the resulting citations can be written as parking tickets as the city intends. Golec said he believes running a red light is a moving violation "if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck."
Under the city's plan, the private company operating the camera system would collect on parking fines, but Golec said state law appears to require his office to collect on moving violations. He fears a significant increase in the burden on his office, which could be costly, he said.
Should even 100 additional tickets be written a day, Golec said he faces processing some 2,000 more tickets a month, meaning he may need to hire part-time help.
Meanwhile, police officers already have written 2,000 more tickets than they had last year at this time, many of which are uncollected, he said. Golec said if people aren't paying tickets written by police officers, he questioned the odds of people paying tickets that would come in the mail from a private company.
"What about the unpaid tickets?" he said.
There is talk of hiring a collection agency, which Golec called "another whole legal quagmire."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 10, 2008 09:26 AM
Posted to Indiana Law