Last week, my friend and colleague Sarah Anderson reported on a bill before the Georgia General Assembly that seeks to ban school zone speed cameras. These cameras are supposed to catch people speeding during school zone hours, but they’re ticketing drivers all hours of the day.
I know this because I’m one of those drivers. You can read my story in Sarah’s report, but I received a ticket outside of school zone hours a few months ago; because it would have been a day-long hassle to fight it in court, I just paid the fine.
“Georgia House Bill 225, which is sponsored by Rep. Dale Washburn (R-144th District), along with several other Republicans and one Democrat, seeks to ‘repeal all laws relative to enforcement of speeding violations in school zones through the use of automated traffic enforcement safety devices,’ as well as to ‘prohibit a local governing body or law enforcement agency from entering into or renewing a contract that provides for enforcement of laws relative to speeding violations in school zones through the use of automated traffic enforcement safety devices,’" Sarah wrote. There’s another bill that would keep the cameras but place more regulations on them.
One county in Georgia is raking in millions from these cameras, even as the mayor of the county seat lies to voters about the cameras. Macon-Bibb County, a hybrid city-county government in the heart of the Peach State, is awash in school zone speed camera cash.
WMAZ, Macon’s CBS affiliate, reports:
Since installing school zone speed cameras back in 2022, Macon-Bibb County has raked in nearly $9 million from the citations, and the private company that installed them has earned just over $2.5 million, too.
All told, drivers in Macon-Bibb County have paid nearly $11.7 million in fines due to school-zone cameras. That's according to Macon-Bibb County data obtained by 13WMAZ through an open-records request.
WMAZ discovered that the revenue more than doubled from 2023 to 2024. Washburn, whose district includes parts of Macon-Bibb County, asks, "Do we really believe that there are that many Bibb County drivers speeding through school zones? I mean that is just very indicative of the problem we have. The fact that the camera company has taken nearly $2 million out of Bibb County says it all."
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Mayor Lester Miller is running around telling people that the city-county government is at the mercy of the state when it comes to the cameras, which isn’t true. The state law doesn’t mandate the cameras, but it allows local governments to put them in school zones. It also allows local authorities to remove them, but Miller denies it. In other words, Miller is lying about the cameras his government is making bank on.
“Over the past few weeks, the Mayor of Macon, Georgia, has made many absurd claims, including that he had no choice but to use the cameras,” Erick Erickson, a Macon resident, observed. Later, Miller began to act as if he never made those claims.
“It's not my fight,” he told a constituent on Facebook. “This is Georgia law that was created by the legislature. If they change the law then we will abide by it.”
“The cameras are a product of Georgia law and we're established by the legislature,” he prevaricated in another Facebook comment, but he contradicted himself two sentences later when he admitted, “We opted in a few years ago and are under contract.”
Interestingly enough, Miller is also calling for a referendum on the cameras at the county level. WMAZ reports that a first offense from the speed cameras costs a driver $100, $25 of which goes to the company that maintains the cameras. My ticket in Gwinnett County, north of Atlanta, was half that.
Erickson is using his nationwide platform to draw attention to the ridiculous speed cameras and the effort to ban them. On Wednesday, the Georgia Senate Public Safety Subcommittee on First Responders will hear HB225, but the rumor is that the committee chairman wants a compromise on the bill that lobbyists for the camera companies are proposing. Erickson provides a list of those committee members at this link; anyone who lives in these districts should call.
The legislative session in Georgia ends April 4, and time is running out to pass HB225. If you live in Georgia, please call your state representative and senator to urge them to back the bill and end the speed camera scam.
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