State Sen. Don Huffines (R-Dallas), a longtime foe of red light cameras, sent a letter to TxDOT Executive Director James Bass requesting a formal investigation regarding cities’ unlawful use of red light traffic cameras across the state.
The request comes on the heels of a report by Jody Barr of KXAN, which exposed that multiple cities across Texas of are disregarding state law as it relates to installing red light cameras.
Barr’s report revealed a number of city administrators disregarded the necessary requirements to be able to install red light cameras in their cities. Most common among the failures is a failure to perform a traffic engineering study— a requirement of the original Senate Bill 1119 passed by the Texas Legislature in 2007.
According to Barr’s investigative work for KXAN, the only cities with red light cameras who had followed the law and obtained the correct study, “signed and sealed by a licensed Texas engineer,” were Abilene, College Station, and Southlake. This leaves out Austin, Dallas, and many other cities.
Such an outrageous and condemning report spurred Huffines to call on TxDOT, to enforce the law currently on the books. In his letter, Huffines calls on the agency to notify all of the cities not complying with the law, see if cities not compliant with the law owe people who had been previously fined money back, and provide a report of those cities who are non-compliant with the current law.
While the Texas Legislature should take the necessary steps during the next legislative session to outright abolish red light cameras across the state, the efforts of KXAN Investigates have exposed the big government lies of many local governments across the state, and Huffines’ letter is a good step in trying to prevent the tyrannical rule of those guilty local governments.