School speed cams back in the picture

City lawmakers have found a way to get the school-zone speedcamera program up and running again by the time Big Apple students return to class next week, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson told The Post on Sunday.

A political firestorm erupted when the program was nixed in a spat between the Republican-controlled state Senate and Democratic-controlled state Assembly.

Before adjourning for the summer, lawmakers failed to renew authorization for the city to fine speeders caught on the cameras.

“This never should have become a political chit,” Johnson said. “The bill we’re doing, I’m happy about because it gets the cameras turned back on.”

Gov. Cuomo has agreed to sign an executive order that would give city officials access to key data needed to match license plates to car ownership records, Johnson said.

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the council will vote on a piece of complex legislation as soon as Wednesday that would address the other technical and legal hurdles, including how to serve the tickets to suspected speeders.

Johnson said the council will hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday.

He added that Mayor de Blasio has agreed to a procedural maneuver that will allow the law to take effect quickly.

If all goes according to schedule, de Blasio could sign the bill as soon as Sept. 4 — the day before the first day of school.

Under the program, speeders in school zones would get hit with $50 tickets, the same penalty that was levied before.

Lawyers at City Hall had been working on finding ways to use the cameras since the beginning of August, and the deal began to “mold in the last three to four days,” Johnson said. The legislation would also give the city the flexibility to expand the program, Johnson added.

“We’re doing our best to protect kids,” he said.

Under state law, the city was allowed to operate speed cameras in 140 school zones, offering children greater protection from reckless drivers.

But the state Senate failed to pass a bill in June that would have renewed the program, forcing officials to stop issuing tickets from 120 of the 140 cameras in July.

The legal authorization for the remaining cameras would expire at the end of the August.

“Speed cameras save kids’ lives,” said de Blasio spokesman Seth Stein. “We can’t risk 1.1 million students returning to school unprotected.”

Parents and pols across the city erupted in fury at Albany’s failure and lawmakers’ refusal to return to Albany to pass the bill.

Their anger intensified after The Post used a radar gun to expose how drivers raced through a school zone in Brooklyn.

Over the course of just a few hours, more than two dozen speeders blew through the intersection of Fourth Avenue and 19th Street.

Although they couldn’t issue tickets, city officials kept the 120 cameras on and caught more than 132,000 drivers doing more than 10 mph over the limit.

A driver going 40 mph needs 300 feet — the length of a football field — to see a child or pet in the road, react and stop a car. That’s double the distance needed to stop a car traveling at 25 mph.

The bill we’re doing, I’m happy about because it gets the cameras turned back on. — City Council Speaker Corey Johnson