They are places that, for better or for worse, have a reputation for having aggressive enforcement of traffic laws.
Most notably, the communities of Brookside and Summerdale have made headlines as of late, but others are scattered throughout Alabama. Harpersville, Brantley, Repton, Georgiana, Rogersville and Uniontown are just a handful of municipality names with such reputations.
With just a few days remaining in the 2022 session, the Alabama Legislature is considering a bill that would limit by percentage the amount of revenue a municipality can collect from traffic citations with the hope of disincentivizing overaggressive enforcement.
Senate Bill 282 (SB282), sponsored by State Sen. Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) and co-sponsored by State Sens. Andrew Jones (R-Centre) and Chris Elliott (R-Daphne) would limit a municipality from receiving more than 10% of its operating budget funding through fines generated from traffic citations.
Elliott acknowledged that the Brookside situation, initially brought to national attention by AL.com, had a lot to do with the push for the bill.
"I think the bill will pass and get signed into law," Elliott said during an appearance on Friday's broadcast of Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5's "The Jeff Poor Show." "Brookside is really probably the worst actor in the state and brought that to everybody's attention. The goal of the legislation is not to curtail law enforcement. It really isn't even to curtail law enforcement from writing tickets but rather to remove the profit incentive, if you will, after a certain level.
"The legislature is basically saying, look, if more than 10% of your annual budget is derived from writing traffic citations, then that is probably unhealthy, and that is more than it needs to be. What we've found through our research really across the state is only a very few, a handful, probably less than a dozen when all is said and done, would fall into that category that are really the ones that need to be curtailed."
Elliott said also another objective was to limit municipalities that have extended their police jurisdiction to include interstate highways or other major four-lane thoroughfares with the purpose of creating an opportunity to ticket speeders.
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