Ohio Supreme Court upholds law slashing state funding for cities collecting traffic-camera fines

COLUMBUS, Ohio—The Ohio Supreme Courtroom on Thursday unanimously upheld a 2019 state regulation setting monetary disincentives for native governments in Ohio to make use of cameras to catch and tremendous motorists for driving infractions.

The village of Newburgh Heights and the town of East Cleveland had challenged the regulation, which reduces state funding to a municipality by the sum of money it collects from traffic-camera fines. The regulation additionally requires native governments to pay prices and charges prematurely when taking civil motion to implement a traffic-camera quotation, aside from instances involving college zones.

The 2 Cleveland suburbs argued that the regulation violates their home-rule powers assured within the Ohio Structure.

However Justice Sharon Kennedy, writing for the court docket, disagreed. “The Ohio Structure doesn’t require the Normal Meeting to applicable any funds to municipalities, and it doesn’t create a particular proper for a municipality to obtain local-government funds from the state,” Kennedy wrote within the court docket’s opinion. The requirement to pay prices and charges forward of time, she held, “merely requires that municipalities that ask state courts to implement citations issued utilizing visitors cameras shoulder the prices that their litigation creates.”

The Supreme Courtroom despatched the case again to the Ohio Eighth District Courtroom of Appeals in Cuyahoga County, which beforehand sided with Newburgh Heights and East Cleveland.

Learn the total opinion right here: