Iowa legislative leaders support statewide policy on traffic cameras

JOHNSTON - Iowa legislative leaders favor a uniform policy on the use of traffic enforcement cameras to enhance roadway safety, but say efforts by some lawmakers to ban the devices makes finding a compromise difficult.

'I've always believed that's an appropriate thing for the state to do,” Speaker Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, said Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, agreed that a statewide policy on the use of the cameras - speed cameras and red light cameras - 'would be a great idea.”

Speaking during the taping of Iowa Press, Gronstal and Paulsen also agreed that the use of the cameras should be for safety, not revenue.

Iowa Press can be seen at 7:30 p.m. Friday and noon Sunday on Iowa Public Television, 8:30 a.m. Saturday and online at www.iptv.org beginning Friday evening.

Legislators have debated the issue more than once, but without enacting legislation. Now Cedar Rapids and Sioux City are suing the Iowa Department of Transportation to keep their traffic enforcement cameras in place.

Cedar Rapids has had cameras in place since early 2010, but last year, the DOT began requiring Iowa cities with cameras to submit crash-data reports to make the case to keep cameras in place.

In March, the DOT ordered some cameras to come down, not only in Cedar Rapids, but in Sioux City, Des Moines, Davenport, Muscatine and Council Bluffs. Des Moines and Muscatine are contemplating lawsuits challenging the DOT order.

The state - the Legislature and state agencies - provides 'oversight and boundaries” in several areas, Paulsen said.

'I think it's an appropriate place for the General Assembly and the DOT to be, to create some of those boundaries,” Paulsen said.

The challenge, Gronstal explained, is legislators who say 'let's just outlaw these cameras. Period.”

'There's a whole set of people that want an absolute prohibition,” he said. 'That makes it a pretty messy process to get to a compromise.”

In setting a uniform statewide policy, Paulsen said he wants to make sure traffic enforcement devices 'continue to be about safety and not about raising money.”

In deciding to sue the DOT, Cedar Rapids Mayor Ron Corbett said the fact there have been no deaths on the crash prone S-curve on Interstate 380 since cameras have gone up, in two locations northbound and two locations southbound at the curve, is compelling evidence to keep them in place. It's a lucrative safety measure, yielding Cedar Rapids $2.2 million of the $3 million in net revenue from its enforcement cameras.

Gronstal said the red light cameras at eight to 10 dangerous intersections in Council Bluffs have reduced accidents from 3,800 down to around 1,000.