State Bill Advancing to Regulate Traffic Cameras

A bill regulating traffic cameras in Tennessee passed out of the state House Finance committee Tuesday.

The bill would require the state to run any photo enforcement cameras on federal highways in Tennessee, and limit them to areas with construction workers.

In recent years some local governments have made deals with private companies, whose cameras catch drivers running lights, in exchange for a share of revenue from citations.

Tim Burchett is sponsoring the bill in the senate; he says he worries about privatizing traffic enforcement.

“This is about revenue; it’s not about saving lives… It doesn’t have anything to do with law enforcement; it’s revenue. And now they’re getting into the speed cameras and that’s the one that scares me; I think that’s getting closer to Big Brother.”

The Senate version of the bill is up for a floor vote Thursday.

Burchett notes this bill wouldn’t undo local contracts with private companies, but lawmakers plan to revisit photo enforcement after studying it further over summer.

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“I wish that they’d just get rid of them altogether. We can’t void a legal binding contract.”

Some local municipalities have praised red-light cameras, saying they free police up to do more important work. Burchett is unswayed:

“I think that’s a bunch of bull. If that were the truth they’d hire more police officers with it and use the money for law enforcement, but they don’t; they just use it as a slush fund to buy more parks and do more things to make them look better in the public’s eye.
Generally us politicians, we love to cut ribbons on things we had nothing to do with, and that’s what you’re doing there; you’re doing it on the back of the working people of the state.”

Neither Burchett nor the House sponsor, Joe McCord, said he foresaw any difficulty reconciling the two chambers’ versions of the bill.

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EXTRA: Waterways

McCord is also the sponsor of a bill revising key regulations about state waterways. The Maryville Representative brought that bill through House Finance at the same time as the traffic camera bill.

The Senate has already passed its version of McCord’s waterways bill.