Hugh McQuaid/CTNJ Photo
State Rep. Roland Lemar on the legislature floor the day the camera bill passed.
Roland Lemar earned the right to take a victory lap this week. As long as he remains sober and below the speed limit.
The state legislature ended this year’s session by passing a bill that the New Haven state representative has championed for 12 years. Gov. Ned Lamont is expected to sign it into law.
The law has an anodyne name: ”An Act Implementing The Recommendations of The Vision Zero Council.”
It has a life-or-death purpose: To stop the ever-growing carnage on Connecticut roads.
The measure features guidelines for municipalities like New Haven to install camera systems to catch and fine speeders and red-light runners near schools and in areas with a history of crashes.
Lemar proposed the camera idea in his first term in office in 2011. It passed through committee reviews but never made it to a floor vote. Suburban legislators saw no need for it. The ACLU and NAACP — two groups with which Lemar is usually in sync on issues — opposed it on privacy grounds as well as fears that communities of color would be targeted by money-grabbing local governments.
In a conversation Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven,” Lemar attributed several factors to his ability to finally shepherd the bill over the finish line this year:
• A safe-streets movement seeking to protect pedestrians and cyclists has grown steadily since 2006 in New Haven, when as an alder Lemar co-sponsored a “complete streets” law for traffic-calming. Hundreds of volunteers held events, proposed policies, wrote legislators. A hearing on the bill this year before the state legislature lasted five hours.
• People are driving bigger vehicles faster than ever before, while getting distracted more by GPS screens and cellphones, making unsafe streets a statewide problem including in the suburbs: Connecticut recorded its most road fatalities in 35 years in 2020, broke that record in 2021, broke it again in 2022, with 239 motorists and 75 pedestrians dying on state roadways. (“If you hit somebody or another vehicle going 25 miles per hour in a Toyota Camry,” there is less chance of death than with a Ford F150, which has replaced Camrys as the top-driven vehicle, traveling 45.) The increased carnage causes people beyond New Haven to reexamine how they view local streets: “These aren’t thruways. They’re building blocks of our neighborhoods. How you get to school, the grocery store, to work.”
• The creation of a “Vision Zero Council” (meaning a goal of no traffic fatalities) led to the camera plan becoming part of a broader plan with broader buy-in.
• Lemar himself worked his way up in the legislature. He developed relationships with lawmakers whom he could lobby one on one. He ascended to the co-chairmanship of the Transportation Committee, a crucial starting point for consideration of the bill.
He also took the ACLU and NAACP concerns seriously, he said: He looked at evidence of discrimination or sleazy enforcement in some other states. Then he amended the bill to limit fines to a $75 maximum; to require that municipalities devote the revenue raised exclusively to road-safety improvements; to delete personally identifiable data 30 days after fines are paid; to create a state review process for where to locate the cameras and collect enforcement data; to require a review and renewal of the program after three years based on that data. “I gave an escape hatch.” The NAACP and ACLU remained opposed, but their concerns were addressed.
(Another argument against the bill was that municipalities already had the power to put up these cameras, but not to keep the revenue. Lemar said both the state’s lawyers and local officials believed state enabling legislation was required; and in any case the bill establishes guidelines and a review process that make it easier for municipalities to set up their systems and address criticisms.)
Paul Bass Photo
Lemar schmoozes with Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett at WNHH FM.
Lemar said municipalities may be able to begin installing cameras as soon as mid-2024 once the state releases details of program guidelines next January.
Lemar was asked how it felt to claim victory in his 12-years-in-the-making cameras quest.
He didn’t mention any victory laps.
“You start thinking, ‘OK, what’s next?”
So what’s next?
He’s working on a “safe routes to school” bill focused on new sidewalks, narrower streets, and investments in buses; and on speeding up the electrification of the state’s bus fleet.
Click on the above video to watch the full conversation with New Haven State Rep. Roland Lemar on WNHH FM’s“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of“Dateline.”
Let's keep some statistics in the public eye as to how many people are actually caught and fined or whatever the penalty will be. This is a fluff law designed to make people feel good. It will have no impact till some people are caught.