Red light for Suffolk fees

Suffolk County Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey, the newly chosen leader of the new Republican legislative majority, is beginning by listening to the gripes of the angry voters who gave them control.

What McCaffrey has pledged to prioritize in his first stretch of leadership is less about big changes than it is about determining how some unpopular measures are working, explaining that to residents, and then finding the best way forward.

Take red light cameras. In Nassau County, the fees have been a flash point. The $50 fine in the state law that authorized a limited number of the cameras on Long Island is reasonable. But Nassau also adds a $55 "public safety fee" and a $45 "driver responsibility fee," and a Republican push to end those two extra fees was just one thing that gave the Nassau GOP huge wins last November.

In Suffolk, the additional fee of $30 was recently found illegal in a state Supreme Court ruling now under appeal. McCaffrey says he’d like the county to stop collecting the $30. But his real passion for improving the red light camera program lies in transparency and implementation. McCaffrey wants to know why the cameras are placed where they are, pointing to a stretch of five straight camera-equipped signals in the West Babylon area of his district, even as other legislators complain about the same in their communities. He wants to ensure that the cameras' locations are chosen to increase safety, not revenue. And he argues that where accidents have increased since the cameras were installed, they should be removed.

That’s complicated. Serious T-bone type accidents matter a lot more than minor rear-end collisions, and more cars on the road can cause accidents to increase for reasons other than cameras. But McCaffrey is right that examining all that information is crucial to improving support for the program, as well as the program itself.

McCaffrey also wants a lot more information on Suffolk’s new school bus camera program, where drivers on the opposite side of major roadways can be recorded passing buses whenever the "Stop" sign arm is extended. He’s hearing that drivers are being ticketed before they possibly could have stopped, and that attempts by motorists to slam on brakes when the school bus is several lanes of traffic away are dangerous and should not be encouraged.

Once again, with that fine at $250, money is a factor, but it’s not necessarily the biggest cause for concern. The program is important: People should not be passing stopped school buses. But it’s also important that the rules make sense, and make us safer.

McCaffrey takes over with an unusual opportunity: For once, there is enough money. That means he can and should prioritize making programs safe, effective, transparent and data-driven, and deprioritize filling county coffers and the pockets of those vendors who operate these systems with their proceeds.