California Legislature to Authorize Photo Parking Tickets

California’s state Senate has given its approval of a new measure which grants local governments throughout the state, the right to install cameras on its street-sweepers, in an effort to write more parking tickets. It will be put in front of the Governor once a final vote by both chambers is made. Under the new bill, a private company would install cameras onto city street-sweepers that will photograph vehicles which may or may not be violating a parking law at that time. The private company then mails a citation to the registered owner of the vehicle and will have the final say for a when a car is ticketed. A similar program failed in Chicago after “realized that the camera photographs needed to capture images of the vehicle AND the parking restriction signs” for the ticket to be valid. However, under the California program, the private company will get to decide which tickets are valid.