The Columbus Dispatch

Brice police not issuing speeding tickets

- John Futty

The police chief for the village of Brice – once a well-known speed trap – said he can't remember the last time he issued a speeding ticket.

According to Franklin County Municipal Court records, Chief Bud Bauchmoyer and his one full-time officer had as of Friday filed just one traffic ticket in all of 2021 – an assured-cleardista­nce offense in March.

That's quite a change for the village of 93 residents, according to the 2020 census. Brice has used speed-enforcemen­t cameras in recent years to generate as much as three-fourths of its general-fund revenue.

Since May, when the village put a hold on its apparently unlawful civilviola­tion system for issuing speeding tickets and collecting fines through a third-party vendor, court records show no enforcemen­t of traffic laws in Brice, at least not in the form of Municipal Court citations.

Even in 2020, when the village's camera system issued civil speeding tickets all year, Brice police only filed three traffic-violation cases in Municipal Court, records show.

Bauchmoyer initially told The Dispatch that village police have been “focusing on other than speed issues” this year, including red-light violations, assured-clear-distance offenses and motorists who have failed to renew their vehicle registrati­ons since the state ended a pandemic-prompted grace period in July.

When informed about the complete lack of tickets filed by village police with the Municipal Court in recent months, Bauchmoyer replied, “It

“There’s nothing to wait for. The court said the Municipal Courts have exclusive jurisdicti­on. (Brice) can’t acknowledg­e, or won’t acknowledg­e, that the Supreme Court has decided this exact same issue and that they had been violating that ruling ever since.” Attorney Andrew Mayle

doesn’t mean we’re not enforcing the law. It doesn’t mean we aren’t answering calls for service. It doesn’t mean we’re not providing services to the village residents and the people that drive through.

“Anyone you ask says we’re always out there ... We can be the visual deterrent, making traffic stops and, under the (Ohio) Revised Code, whether to write a ticket or not is strictly up to the officer’s discretion.”

Until recently, the village aggressive­ly ticketed speeders using a camera-based system through which Blueline Solutions, a third-party vendor, mailed out the tickets and collected the fines. Those who challenged their tickers were scheduled for an administra­tive hearing in the village.

The most-recent audits of village finances by the Ohio Auditor’s office found that Brice’s share of the fines collected through its contractua­l arrangemen­t with Blueline was $202,078 in 2017 and $171,660 in 2018. An audit for 2016 showed that the $171,611 collected that year represente­d 73% of the village’s general fund revenue.

When asked how the police department is generating revenue these days, Bauchmoyer said that’s not his concern.

“My job is to do my job, not to worry about the money,” he said. “Some people believe, erroneousl­y, that the police department only has money if we write tickets.”

The village, which surrounds the intersecti­ons of Brice and Refugee roads just south of Reynoldsbu­rg, has paused its civil-speeding ticket program amid a series of legal challenges that accuse it of violating a 2019 state law and a Ohio Supreme Court ruling the following year.

A Franklin County Municipal Court judge last year dismissed speeding tickets issued by Brice in two separate cases contested in his courtroom, finding that the citations violated state law.

The Ohio legislatur­e had approved an amendment to the state’s Revised Code, effective in July 2019, that gave municipal courts “exclusive jurisdicti­on” over all civil traffic offenses, seemingly putting an end to the way Brice was handling the cases administra­tively.

In Magsig vs. the City of Toledo, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimousl­y ruled in 2020 that Toledo was violating that law by holding administra­tive hearings for those who challenged tickets generated by the city’s trafficenforceme­nt cameras – the same system Brice was using.

Yet Brice kept using Blueline to handle the ticketing and administra­tive village hearings to deal with ticket appeals until early 2021.

Bauchmoyer said the village, acting on advice from its attorney, has put a hold on the camera-based civil enforcemen­t of speeding violations while awaiting a Supreme Court ruling in a pending case involving the city of Dayton.

A Toledo-area lawyer who prevailed in the Magsig case said the Supreme Court already decided the issue of who has jurisdicti­on over civil traffic violations in its 2020 ruling.

“There’s nothing to wait for,” attorney Andrew Mayle said. “The court said the Municipal Courts have exclusive jurisdicti­on. (Brice) can’t acknowledg­e, or won’t acknowledg­e, that the Supreme Court has decided this exact same issue and that they had been violating that ruling ever since.”

The action – or inaction – of the Brice police department since pausing its camera-based, speed-enforcemen­t system shows that it has been engaging for years in “policing for profit,” he said.

“Now that the profit motive is gone, they’re not policing at all,” Mayle said. “They go from a huge number of camera tickets for money, and then when they have to go to court and do it the right way, they don’t file any. The only conclusion is that they were doing it only for the money.”

The Dayton case before the state Supreme Court doesn’t even deal with jurisdicti­onal issues about enforcing civil traffic violations, Mayle contends.

The village’s attorney, Brian Zets, of Isaac Wiles & Burkholder, did not return a message last week seeking comment for this story and an update on the status of public records requested by The Dispatch. jfutty@dispatch.com @johnfutty

 ?? COLUMBUS DISPATCH JIM WILHELM/ ?? Signs at the entrance to Brice village along Brice Road south of Gender Road include a 25 mph speed limit sign and a warning that traffic laws are photo enforced.
COLUMBUS DISPATCH JIM WILHELM/ Signs at the entrance to Brice village along Brice Road south of Gender Road include a 25 mph speed limit sign and a warning that traffic laws are photo enforced.

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