FINANCE COMMITTEE APPROVES$ 39MILLION RED- LIGHTSETTLEMENT

The City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday gave the green light to a $ 38.75 million settlement with motorists denied due process after being slapped with red- light and speed- camera tickets — even after being told that attorneys could claim $ 11.5 million of that money.

“I wish I could be extremely happy that some of these people are getting their money back. But it looks like the lawyers are the ones getting the bulk of this money,” said Ald. Anthony Beale ( 9th), chairman of the City Council’s Transportation Committee.

Beale was equally incensed by Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel’s explanation of where the city found the money for the settlement.

It includes $ 26.75 million in refunds to motorists who paid their fines, and $ 12 million in debt forgiven from motorists who never paid their tickets.

Roughly $ 10 million of it will come from the settlement paid by Redflex Traffic Systems, the Arizona company at the center of a red- light camera program built on a $ 2 million bribery scandal.

The rest will come from the $ 18 million that hotel reservation websites have agreed to pay the city to settle a 12- year- old lawsuit seeking higher tax payments.

Beale argued again that “a lot of heads should roll,” to punish the City Hall bureaucrats who dropped the ball on due process.

Siskel said it’s not possible to hold any one person accountable.

“This was not something that was an individual decision. It was a confluence of events that contributed to not putting in place the mechanism required to comply with the ordinance that required sending out that second notice,” he said.

If the full City Council and a judge sign off on the settlement, eligible motorists will receive 50 percent refunds.

Almost as important as the refunds is the city’s promise not to use any of those 1.5 million tickets when it comes to determining whose car gets a Denver boot and whose driver’s license gets suspended.