RDS In The Media
Green light for bill collectors
Cities use outsourcing to force violators to pay
By Mary Macdonald
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/02/08
The automatic cameras at busy intersections around metro Atlanta serve a simple function: Run a red light and you get a ticket.
What hasn't been so simple is getting all the violators to pay up. Some local municipalities have been left holding a pile of uncollected tickets.
Roswell had nearly $200,000 in uncollected fines. The cities of Lilburn and Duluth were seeing more than one in four tickets go unpaid.
They all sought a similar solution: Forget the cops — call in the bill collectors. The three cities have each hired an Alabama company to recoup unpaid red-light fines.
The company keeps about a quarter of what it brings in. But for the communities, it’s worth the cost.
"When a person violates the law, it doesn't seem to make sense to let them say, 'I’m just going to ignore the ticket,' " said Phil McLemore, city administrator for Duluth. "It's the principle. You've violated the law. There is a penalty for that."
That city recently added the red-light cameras to a second intersection. The first produced about $1 million in ticket proceeds in its first year.
In Roswell, in the past nine months alone, cameras installed at two intersections have netted $1.2 million in fines.
A relatively small portion — about 16 percent — hasn’t been paid for at least 60 days. These fines, considered delinquent, will be turned over to the collector, said a city spokeswoman, Julie Brechbill.
Cities say they need the outside help because tickets generated by the so-called "red-light cameras" carry civil penalties, limiting their authority to collect.
Unlike with unpaid taxes, cities can’t attach a lien to a property for unpaid tickets.
And they can’t revoke a driver’s license or arrest someone for not paying.
But they can — and will — hire companies that specialize in bill collection.
If ticket holders continue to skip the payment, the penalty is a tarnished credit report.
Lilburn, Duluth and Roswell, chose Birmingham-based Revenue Discovery Systems to catch up with delinquent red light runners.
About six months ago, Lilburn determined about 30 percent of the tickets triggered by its red-light cameras were being ignored, said City Manager Tom Combiths.
"We just wanted to make sure we had a mechanism in place to follow up with these folks," he said.
To allow some people to skip the fines would be unfair, he said.
"If you have folks who comply with the law, and those who don’t, and there’s no penalty for them not complying, it’s not a fair system."
The city was among the first in Georgia to install the red light cameras, which first were authorized by the state Legislature in 2003. Although they bring in revenue, the cameras also carry expenses.
Cities typically pay companies to install and monitor the cameras and send out tickets.
Roswell pays its contractor about $300,000 a year for the service.
And the state law requires someone to independently verify that each photo taken with the camera, in fact, depicts someone who has run the red light.
The tickets are limited by state law to $70.
For cities with the cameras, the dollars add up quickly.
In Marietta, cameras at one intersection produced $1.7 million in fines in 2005. That intersection, Windy Hill Road at Cobb Parkway, is among the busiest in Cobb County.
Duluth installed the cameras as a way to curb red-light running.
The number of violations, McLemore said, was disturbing.
Now, two years later, he estimates that the number of serious T-bone accidents at the intersections has declined by 30 percent.
The city decided to hire the collection company when it determined about a quarter of the tickets issued with the cameras were going unpaid.
"There are people out there who don't believe they have to pay these, and aren't," he said.