A New York State appellate division court ruled in November that Nassau County’s $100 fees on top of the base penalty for red-light camera violations of $50 were illegal.
The appellate division, which also ruled against Suffolk County’s $30 administrative fee, sent the court cases back to the counties’ State Supreme Courts to determine how much money the counties owe to motorists.
Under the law, this could total hundreds of millions of dollars. In fairness, we think it should.
Nassau County generated $64 million in revenue from its red-light program in 2022, the most recent year for which statistics are available, thanks to 492,520 tickets.
Nearly two-thirds of the $64 million was generated by a $45 “driver responsibility fee” and a $55 “public safety fee” that the financially troubled county imposed in 2009.
Critics say this was just a tax by another name adopted by county legislators whose re-election campaigns routinely boast of the lawmakers’ never having raised taxes.
The problem with the county’s two fees was, as the appellate division judges pointed out in their decision, that the 2009 state law that authorized local governments to establish red-light camera programs stipulated that fines “shall not exceed $50 for each violation.”
The judges wrote that a “plain reading” of the state law prohibits counties from collecting anything more than that.
They also noted that during the law’s floor debate in Albany, “the statute’s sponsor assured the Legislature that administrative fees that were sometimes tacked on to Vehicle and Traffic Law violations would not apply.”
In other words, for the past 15 years, Nassau County has been effectively running red lights hundreds of thousands of times a year.
The county could still file for permission to appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court.
Democratic county legislators have sought to preclude the county from avoiding a large payout by proposing legislation that would allow motorists to get a refund if they had to pay the two fees.
Nassau County Legislature Presiding Officer Howard Kopel (R-Lawrence) said he won’t allow the refund bill to be voted on, citing the budgetary strain that reimbursement of past fees would create.
This seems to fall under the category of if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. The state legislation was clear. Nassau County officials just chose to ignore it.
A lawsuit against Suffolk County’s red light camera fees has received class action certification, which could clear the way for a similar suit
against Nassau County. Both suits could require the counties to repay motorists – with interest.
The appellate court’s ruling should also be a lesson for Nassau Democrats and Republicans who have chosen to impose excessive administrative fees rather than raising taxes or cutting expenses to balance the county budget – the fairer but politically less convenient way.
In 2021, Republican county legislators proposed eliminating the $55 public safety fee — which is used to fund the county police department — when Democrat Laura Curran served as county executive.
Democratic lawmakers abstained from the vote and Curran vetoed the legislation, calling the public safety fee a key source of revenue for the county police department.
The vetoed legislation also included amendments to eliminate or reduce other onerous measures imposed by the county – a $355 fee to verify a property’s section, block and lot and a $300 mortgage recording. The amendment called for a reduction to $50.
Curran cited the fees as necessary for the county, which has been under state oversight for the past 25 years after nearly going bankrupt in 1999.
During the Nassau County executive’s race later in 2021, Republican Bruce Blakeman, who defeated Curran, opposed the public safety fee as “outrageously expensive” and vowed to eliminate it.
But in the three years since taking office, Blakeman has not proposed legislation to eliminate the fee.
This was part of a pattern repeated several times by both parties.
We hope the courts do the right thing and return the money Nassau County took from motorists illegally.
But a second question remains. What should be done with the red-light camera program?
Suffolk County eliminated its $30 administrative fee in 2023 and is ending its red-light camera program this year after state lawmakers facing re-election did not extend it.
But the Nassau County program, which was set to expire on Dec. 1, was extended for five more years.
A 2022 report indicates that the program has led to steep reductions in crashes at red-light camera intersections.
But opponents of red-light cameras say that if Nassau’s system was truly successful at improving driver safety, revenue should decline rather than increase as it did from 2020 to 2022. The highest number of violations was recorded in 2018, followed by 2019.
We recommend that Nassau County keep the 308 cameras operating at 100 intersections and wait to see if the accident rate in Suffolk County goes up in the next two years before deciding whether or not to eliminate the program completely.
In the meantime, the county should return all the money it took from motorists through illegal means for 15 years.
