Bus camera tickets in nonparticipating school districts are legitimate, BusPatrol tells Hempstead

The Town of Hempstead says its school bus camera vendor has determined that 80,000 citations issued within school districts that never signed up for the program are valid, months after a town official said the program was "potentially overreaching its legal authority."

In a recent statement responding to Newsday inquiries, Town Attorney John Maccarone said the vendor, BusPatrol, conducted "a thorough review ... of their policies and practices" and found "no violations were improperly issued in the instances in question."

Maccarone continued: "The Town remains steadfast in its commitment to this critical child safety program."

The new statement is a sharp departure from January, when a Newsday investigation revealed widespread ticketing in four school districts that don’t participate in the bus camera program.

The same day that story published online, Town Supervisor Donald X. Clavin Jr. said he was "demanding" that any improper tickets should be dismissed or refunded.

In the months since, town officials have provided no updates on plans to refund or throw out any such tickets.

Town spokesman Brian Devine did not answer multiple questions about Maccarone’s statement and if it means no bus camera tickets will be refunded or dismissed.

Despite BusPatrol's determination on tickets in the nonparticipating districts — Baldwin, Hempstead, Lawrence and Valley Stream 13 — the town is now issuing dramatically fewer of them in those places, data shows.

In 2023 and 2024, three of the four districts accounted for 26% of more than 270,000 bus camera tickets issued by the town. Valley Stream 13 was not included because village boundaries also contain school districts that do participate in the program.

Hempstead Town wrote only 416 school bus camera tickets in those three districts in the first few months of 2025 — about 2% of 20,956 citations issued across the entire town, according to statistics obtained by Newsday through a public records request.

The 2019 state law that permitted school bus camera programs requires local governments to reach agreements with school districts to run the cameras on buses operated by those districts. Hempstead Town’s own 2022 bus camera law also requires school district participation.

Bus camera citations carry a minimum $250 fine, with the town getting 55% of the revenue and BusPatrol 45%.

Multiple class-action lawsuits were filed following the Newsday investigation. Tickets from the four districts alone, if paid, are worth $20 million to the town program.

Officials in the Baldwin and Lawrence school districts declined to comment for this story. Hempstead schools didn't respond to a request.

Nassau County traffic court, which adjudicates bus camera tickets for Hempstead, paused hearings earlier this year, with officials saying they wanted to ensure proper procedures were followed. Ticketed drivers told Newsday this week that court cases were again being scheduled, but it's not clear if tickets from the four nonparticipating school districts are included.

A county spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

In January, Maccarone wrote a letter to BusPatrol requesting that improper tickets be voided and any driver who paid such a ticket be refunded.

"This is troubling and indicates that in its current state, the program is potentially overreaching its legal authority," Maccarone wrote in the letter to Karoon Monfared, BusPatrol's chief executive.

The town initially demanded BusPatrol pay back drivers, but as Newsday reported in February, a previously signed contract amendment could have left the town on the hook for refunds.

That amendment, signed in December 2023, says BusPatrol would only have to pay up to $250,000 in legal fees for the town to defend lawsuits against the bus camera program "based on its constitutionality or the Town’s authority to enforce it within the Town’s boundaries."

BusPatrol’s liability would likely stop there in such cases, attorneys told Newsday.

Devine previously said any potential refunds "will not cost taxpayers a dime."

It’s unclear how, as Maccarone said, BusPatrol determined citations written in the four school districts were not improper.

The Virginia-based company declined to comment for this story.