Mayor Muriel Bowser’s new budget proposal includes the addition of 342 new traffic enforcement cameras and a new wrinkle: the $580 million in revenue the cameras are expected to generate over the next four years is slated to go into the general fund, not a street safety fund as originally intended.

The District will also create a task force to study the impact of flat fines.

Bowser’s proposal to redirect the funds to prop up the budget is a change from the Vision Zero law that required camera ticket revenue to go to efforts to redesign streets.

For Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who heads the D.C. Council’s transportation committee, that is a move in the wrong direction.

“I think that most of us on the council want to see those dollars go towards improving safety, slower speeds, safer streets,” he said. “It’s not about the revenue.”

But he also said Bowser’s decision plays into the hands of people who say the cameras have never been about safety, but about raising revenue.

“Understandably, it makes people who are already cynical feel like they just proved their point,” he said.

Budget director Jennifer Reed says ​​without redirecting those funds, the District could face a debt cap that wouldn’t allow them to fund capital improvements on the streets.

Meanwhile, some advocates say the more than tripling of cameras, (including 140 new bus lane enforcement cameras and 122 new speed cameras), is simply not the right move.

Priya Sarathy Jones, Deputy Executive Director of the Fine and Fees Justice Center, is disappointed D.C. is continuing what she calls a flawed model and that traffic calming and narrowing streets to limit speed is the smarter play.

“Mayors often roll out these programs, saying they are about street safety and reducing injury, crashes, and fatalities, which is a good policy goal,” she said. “But what almost always ultimately ends up happening is you see how much revenue it’s generating and you shift away.”

“You shouldn’t have to rely on people breaking the law to fund important government functions.”

Ariel Levinson-Waldman, president of Tzedek DC, a non-profit dedicated to helping people with low incomes deal with abusive debt collection practices says adding more cameras is not a good look for racial equity and justice.

He cited a 2019 study from the D.C. Policy Center that shows the cameras are distributed in neighborhoods that have more people of color and lower incomes. He also said D.C. fines more money per capita than any other city.

“One of the collateral consequences of unpaid fines and fees in the District is that if you have over $100 in unpaid fines and fees for any reason, you are disqualified from getting your occupational license. And the District license is over 130 jobs,” he said. “So if you want to be an HVAC cleaner, you want to be a cosmetologist, you want to be a barber, you want to be a nurse, and you get a fee that doubles quickly and you can’t pay? You cannot work lawfully in your chosen profession.”

The speed cameras will be deployed on the District’s high-crash corridors, though exact locations are yet to be determined.

The plan for more cameras has been in the works for two years, but now officials are set to install them. Bowser says she hopes they act as a deterrent to dangerous driving.

“I hope we don’t collect anything from the cameras because you know what that would mean?” she asked. “People aren’t driving recklessly, aren’t running red lights. They’re staying out of bus lanes. They’re not running stop signs. And people can get across the District more safely.

“And if that is realized, then we’ll also realize reductions in revenue in the remainder of the financial plan.”

Bowser says people often tell her they are tired of reckless driving, speeding, and “people needlessly dying on our streets.”

Automated Ticket Enforcement, she says, has shown benefits over the years. Most people get one ticket and never get another again.

“I think a 70% payment rate is not bad,” says Bowser. “But we also have to figure out how we address the scofflaws.”

Task force will look at impact of camera ticket fines 

The mayor is also establishing a task force to look at the equity of the camera ticket fines.

“There are rightly questions about how ticket enforcement or ATE (Automated Ticket Enforcement) affects behavior and also how flat fees affect people of different incomes differently and, quite candidly, if they affect Black and Brown communities more dramatically than other communities,” Bowser said at her budget press conference. “And so we want that task force to address those issues so that we have the most effective policies possible.”

The task force has a lengthy to-do list including:

• Exploring ways to maximize the efficacy of the ATE program in reducing the frequency and severity of crashes and traffic fatalities.
• Examining fine amounts and penalties for ATE and other moving violations and investigating options for making them more equitable.
• Exploring the feasibility of creating an “ability to pay” pilot program and a targeted amnesty program for ATE tickets and other moving violation fines.
• Looking at the equity of current and future ATE camera locations.
• Creating incentives to get other jurisdictions to collect outstanding fines from the owners of vehicles registered outside the District.
• Looking at fine amounts, payment plans, and other best practices from other governments locally, nationally, and internationally.

That task force will be chaired by Deputy Mayor Lucinda Babers and Chief Equity Officer Amber Hewitt and include only people from government agencies like the District Department of Transportation, Police, Public Works, and DMV.

An initial report is due at the end of September and a final, more in-depth report is due by September 2024, according to a mayoral order posted last Friday.

Bowser administration officials declined to answer questions about the task force and its work.

Fair fine advocates say they are glad to see the city examine the issue, but are skeptical about the outcome. Sarathy Jones of the Fine and Fees Justice Center said the task force seems to be a farce, saying it solely relies on government officials and doesn’t include expert opinions or community involvement.

“It once again puts the government in a position where it is not building trust or transparency with its residents,” Sarathy Jones said.

The traffic enforcement debate came to a head last month when a man who racked up 44 tickets in a year worth $12,000 killed three people on Rock Creek Parkway. Despite D.C. knowing he was reckless driving, he still was on the road.

Sarathy Jones said it wouldn’t have mattered if that man paid the tickets or not.

“Would it have made that driver any safer because he paid the fines? No,” she said. “The problem was that that individual is a reckless outlier in this system and we are not focusing our energy, attention, enforcement tools, all that we have to keep people like that off the road.

“What people lose in this… they are conflating money with accountability and responsible driving. We don’t actually do the work to see what makes people drive better.”

She says D.C. should focus on systems that keep reckless drivers off the road because the victims’ families “will never be able to come back” from their loss.

Cities should target the reckless driver and suspend their licenses, she says. They shouldn’t keep increasing fines and penalties for those that speed once, but can’t afford to pay the ticket, causing the fine to double.

“It’s about who pays, not who’s safe or who’s not safe,” Sarathy Jones said. “And so what that is really telling me is that as long as I got enough money, I can break the rules.”

Levinson-Waldman of Tzedek DC says the system should be adjusted to treat people more equitably.

“Jeff Bezos and Dan Snyder are affected differently by a fine than a nurse or a school teacher in the District,” he said. “But right now, our system doesn’t distinguish between the two.

“And so this is an opportunity to really engage on… how to make the system make more sense.”

He said there are several options to change the system, including day fines.

“The basic insight is that if we’re setting up fines and fees – not for the purpose of generating revenue, but for the purpose of getting good outcomes and incentivizing better behavior – that (fining) approximately one day’s worth of wages is a is a good way to do it,” Levinson-Waldman said.

But there are so many layers to automated ticket enforcement that Levinson-Waldman says the task force will have a number of issues to wade through, like: Are cameras equitably distributed? Is equipment properly calibrated? Are vehicles properly licensed?

Many drivers appear to have gotten around the consequences of speed cameras by having fake license plates, fake temporary tags, or no tags at all. D.C. Police say they’ve made 1,200 arrests for fake tags over the past few years, but they can’t get those vehicles off the road as fast as they proliferate

Do tickets change behavior? D.C. says many people only get one ticket and never again.

What happens to those that rack up tens of thousands of dollars? Should camera tickets come with points against your driver’s license instead of fines?

How do you deal with cross-state drivers? Virginia and Maryland have reciprocity, forcing drivers to pay tickets in different states in order to renew plates or licenses, for police-issued tickets, but not camera tickets.

Sarathy Jones says D.C. has the opportunity to be a model for the rest of the country.

“That is what I would sort of offer up to the mayor and to the government: you have the opportunity to actually be the model and the question is, are you going to step up to try to be that?” she said.