Suffolk County undecided on how to collect $13 million in unpaid BusPatrol fines

A June audit revealed a problem with Suffolk County’s school bus camera program.

Between May 2021, when Suffolk County began ticketing drivers caught on camera passing stopped school buses, and December 2022, more than one-quarter of school bus camera tickets had gone unpaid, leaving nearly $13 million in fines uncollected.

The county comptroller’s office, which published the audit, wrote that BusPatrol America, the Virginia-based company that installed cameras on school buses and manages the enforcement program for the county, "should establish processes for collecting past-due amounts."

It turns out BusPatrol had been trying to do so for months before the audit was released.

In a letter responding to the county audit, BusPatrol CEO Karoon Monfared wrote that the company "has already taken steps to contract with a debt collection agency to collect outstanding fines" and was waiting to hear back from Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine on how to proceed.

For BusPatrol to contract with a debt collector, the company would need to amend its contract with Suffolk County, according to Romaine spokesman Mike Martino. 

But the collection of unpaid school bus camera tickets won't begin anytime soon, as Romaine has not signed off on the contractual change that would allow BusPatrol to hire a debt collector, as the county continues to deliberate on how to recoup the fines.

"An amendment to the BusPatrol contract allowing the company to work with a debt collector was proposed barely three weeks before the Romaine Administration took office," Martino said. "The amendment was never finalized by the county."

The proposed amendment was in front of the county in December, just before the administration of former County Executive Steve Bellone left office. 

BusPatrol’s Monfared signed the amendment along with former Chief Deputy County Attorney Christiana McSloy and Paul Margiotta, former executive director of the Suffolk County Traffic and Parking Violations Agency. All three signed the amendment in the days just before Christmas 2023, according to the document Newsday obtained on Monday.

Absent from the amendment was a signature from Lisa Black, the former chief deputy county executive. The line for her signature is blank.  

Because the county executive’s office never approved the amendment, BusPatrol hasn’t been able to start using a debt collector to go after the unpaid tickets, Martino said. When asked what else the county was considering to collect, Martino said the county is "exploring" its options.

BusPatrol did not respond to questions for this story, including one about the name of the debt collector it has engaged. 

Between May 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2022, 51,954 school bus citations went unpaid in Suffolk County, out of a total of 201,614 tickets issued in that period, according to the comptroller’s audit.

Drivers caught on BusPatrol cameras passing a stopped school bus are charged $250 for the first violation, with subsequent violations drawing heavier penalties. That means the unpaid tickets account for at least $12.9 million in lost revenue, according to the audit. 

Under the terms of the contract, Suffolk County gets 55% of the revenue generated by the bus camera program, while the remaining 45% goes to BusPatrol. The unpaid tickets through 2022 mean Suffolk has missed out on more than $7.1 million in potential revenue and BusPatrol is short about $5.8 million. 

Last year, Suffolk issued 103,532 school bus citations. The county’s most recent annual report on the bus camera program, published in May, said 77% of tickets were paid last year, while nearly 23% went unpaid — nearly $6 million more in missing potential revenue.

Neither BusPatrol nor Suffolk County provided Newsday with an updated count of the total number of outstanding fines.

Since the beginning of 2022, the Suffolk County bus camera program has generated around $45 million in fines, according to the 2022 and 2023 annual reports. Of that, more than $20 million have gone to BusPatrol.

The bus camera program has been contentious from its inception. Cited drivers have complained of getting tickets from buses stopped several lanes of traffic away or on the other side of divided roads. (New York law requires drivers to stop for school buses, regardless of what side of the road or if a median is present.)

BusPatrol and the county have maintained that the bus camera program is explicitly to protect students from reckless drivers.

In addition to Suffolk, BusPatrol has school bus camera programs in the Town of Hempstead, Glen Cove, Long Beach, Oyster Bay Town and North Hempstead Town. Nassau has so far declined to have a countywide bus camera program.

But it’s not just unpaid tickets that have meant lost revenue for the county and BusPatrol.

Earlier this year, Suffolk dismissed more than 8,000 contested school bus violations, citing a backlog of cases that had been on hold after a New York appellate court ruled to dismiss a citation received by Suffolk resident Alfred Croce III for lack of evidence.

That decision called the bus camera program into question — the reason Suffolk paused prosecution on thousands of tickets — and the issue wasn’t resolved until state legislators this spring tweaked the 2019 law that had allowed Suffolk to contract with BusPatrol to put cameras on school buses.

Class-action lawsuits have also been filed against Long Island school bus camera programs in federal court, and in State Supreme Court in both Nassau and Suffolk counties. Earlier this month, a judge dismissed the federal lawsuit, but both suits before the State Supreme Court remain active.