Mitch Little - Texas State Rep. District 65 (North Texas) Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, you don't have to worry about red light cameras
in most places. But there is a bill in front
of the Texas Senate that would bring back sort of
the red light cameras, but a little little different angle here.
It'd be red light red light cameras on school buses.
In other words, the people who ignore when that you know,
stop arm comes down and the red light's flashing. You

(00:25):
know you're supposed to You're supposed to stop. You're supposed
to give room until the school bus has been unloaded
and then be on your way. But there are people
who routinely don't see it, ignore it, whatever you want
to say, and so they're looking at this as a
potential way to maybe cut down on that. I'm not
sure it's going to work, but okay, let's talk about

(00:45):
it for a second with Mitch Little. Former Ken Paxton,
defense attorney, Texas state representative from District sixty five in
North Texas. I know you're opposed to the bill. Why
do you have a problem with this bill, sir, Hey,
good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
I'm well, there's no doubt that there are problems going
on throughout the state, people just blowing through school buses
that are stopped. In fact in Midlands where Speaker Tom
Kratick offered the bill, He's had a couple of fatalities
in his district. The question is how do we resolve
it as a state government. So what's been proposed is

(01:18):
that we allow these swing arms stop like cameras to
help write tickets or citations to people who blow through them.
The problem is, Jimmy, is a company called bus Patrol
out of Florida.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Have you heard of them? I've not heard of them.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
No. So bus Patrol is owned by a series of
family offices and private equity companies.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
It is based out of Virginia.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
They implemented their system in Florida as soon as the
state of Florida legalized these swing arm cameras, and in
the first week, Jimmy, they issued eleven five hundred citations.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Holy moment. Problem.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
And the problem is, and wait for it, this isn't
even the good part. It's very difficult to challenge these
because most municipal courts don't have a system that's set
up to try cases where people actually were videoed and
cited wrongly. But would you believe that Bus Patrol and
these other companies that set up these systems. They receive

(02:15):
seventy percent of the money from every citation from now
until perpetuity, to the point where they're making like a
million dollars a month in Miami Dade out of the
school system. It's truly amazing. Here's the best part though,
as soon as Florida. So there's a lady named Vicky
Lopez who's a state representative in Florida. As soon as

(02:37):
they implemented the system, her son went and worked for
bus patrol and began basically lobbying Minami Dade schools. And
people are incensed in Miami Dade schools or in the
Miami area in Florida because they're saying they've been sited wrong.
There's a class action lawsuit in Florida. There's a class
action lawsuit in New York. And so the big question

(02:58):
we have is do we turn and over basically the
public offers to a company like that, who's going to
be rating the pockets of people who live here.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Okay, so they're writing some tickets, some bad tickets. It
sounds like, I mean, you write that. It's hardably there's
that many people on a monthly basis, they're passing school
buses that way, so they're obviously doing it to generate income,
and it's generating a whole lot of income. What idea
would you offer up, sir, that might make it a
little easier to enforce making sure that we have people

(03:29):
who are respecting these these stop lights on these school
buses without you know, having some sort of a system
that sort of spies on them if you will.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
You know, I think it's a I think there are
good reasons to increase the penalties for doing such a
thing for when people are actually caught. But I don't
I don't see the incentive being there for this significant
wealth transfer, because you know, while while some people be
okay writing a two hundred and twenty dollars check or
two hundred dollars check on a citation like that, a

(04:01):
lot of people won't and they'll be stuck with it
for a very long time. It's uh, it's actually quite predatory.
The biggest complaint I had is they're taking seventy percent
of the cast. Yeah yeah, yeah, So it's not really
got at the beginning, not really beneving the schools in
this particular case, and it doesn't sound like it's done
anything really to change behavior at this point either. Mitch,
thanks for joining us. Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
You bet. That is Texas State Representative Mitch Little