Campaign for Liberty

June 6, 2019 in News by RBN

 

Dear John,

You did it!! On Saturday, June 1, 2019, Governor Abbott signed our bill to ban red light cameras in Texas (HB 1631) into law.

Texas Campaign for Liberty has been fighting for this bill for several sessions and we wanted to share this success with you.

Without your help writing emails, making phone calls, and signing our petitions, we would never have gotten this far.

Unfortunately, a “grandfather” clause for existing cameras was slipped into a last minute amendment by Representative Armando Martinez (D-Weslaco). . .

. . . And the camera company trick almost worked.

But the attempt to save all of the cameras was disabled by another amendment by Representative Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park), which prevented cities from rushing out and extending their contracts and forcing cities with certain types of contracts to end their program immediately.

Our best estimate is that as few as five cities will have the option to keep their cameras on for a time — the rest should be shut down right away.

Some cities have already announced they are ending their programs immediately.

Thankfully, another amendment by Cole Heffner (R-Mount Pleasant) took away the last tool these greedy cities had to enforce their scam tickets.

“Registration holds” for unpaid tickets — where citizens are denied the ability to register their vehicles until outstanding tickets are paid — will no longer be allowed, so it is likely the remaining cities with grandfather clauses will end their programs since they can no longer collect the fines.

This all happened because we didn’t give up when we were told it wasn’t possible.

We also didn’t give up when they tried to give us a watered-down ban bill that would have kept all cameras in Texas for decades to come.

With your help, we ended up with a much better bill.

It was thanks to you and all of our Texas Campaign for Liberty friends and supporters that this victory was possible.

We know what we can do when we work together and don’t give up — but our fight is never over.

Our liberties will continue to be trampled on without constant vigilance.

I hope you stay in the fight with me.

In Liberty,

Byron Schirmbeck
State Coordinator
Texas Campaign for Liberty

P.S. Thank you for your help in ending red light cameras in Texas. Don’t become complacent — there is still a lot of work left to be done to restore liberty in Texas. I still need you pitching in!

P.P.S. Please chip in $10 or $20 to help Campaign for Liberty continue the fight to restore liberty in Texas.