Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin is accusing the village of Brice of being a speed trap after getting a ticket in December.
Hardin and Franklin County Clerk of Courts Lori Tyack said the thousands of tickets from the village are putting a strain on the court. The court has to hire more staff as it fronts the cost to process these tickets.
"I think just about everybody is calling this out for what it is, which is a speed trap," Hardin told WOSU Wednesday.
Hardin posted on social media Tuesday afternoon lambasting the small village of just more than 90 people southeast of Columbus. He said he took 7 months to talk about the issue because he wanted to do research and get numbers on Brice's practice of issuing speeding tickets.
Hardin accused Brice of funding most of its government off the backs of Columbus residents.
"The village of Brice is making this large profit off of mostly Columbus voters," Hardin said. "And then Columbus voters are paying their ticket as well as paying for these extra staff that go specifically to process tickets for Brice and I just think it's unfair."
Brice officials, including Police Chief Bud Bauchmoyer said Brice is trying to deter decades of speeding through the small community.
"Don't be mad at me. I didn't have my foot on your accelerator. You were the one driving. You were one that chose to speed. They put the speedometer right there in front of you. If you can't see it, then maybe you shouldn't be driving," Bauchmoyer said.
Hardin got a ticket in December after 4 p.m. for going 10 miles over the 30 mph speed limit in school zone. Hardin paid the $236 ticket.
Of that ticket, $111 went to court costs for processing it and $125 went to Brice. In total, Hardin and the Franklin County Municipal Court said Brice has issued more than 8,000 tickets since September, generating more than $400,000 in total revenue for the village.
That is 80 times the revenue Westerville generated from speeding tickets in Franklin County and 33 times what Dublin brought in. Those suburbs dwarf Brice by population and the amount of traffic that goes through each city everyday.
The city of Columbus funds the Franklin County Municipal Court.
Bauchmoyer said Brice does so much traffic enforcement to protect the roughly 300 children who go to school within the village's limits.
"Just because the sign is there does not mean people are going to slow down, and that's evident by the number of tickets that I'm issuing in the school zone," Bauchmoyer said.
Hardin said he would prefer if Brice did traditional enforcement by having an officer in a squad car monitor people's speed. Brice now uses cameras to record people speeding.
Bauchmoyer said if people want to speed, they can go a different route. He said since they've put the cameras up, the amount of speed has decreased per car, but not the total number of speeders.
He said the Franklin County Engineer's Office sets the speed for Brice and he agrees with it.
"We believe that for safety reasons this speed limit should be 25 and, you know, it's been 25 ever since roads were invented in the village of Brice," Bauchmoyer said.
Tyack spokesman Tate Wooding said the court has to hire two more employees to help with the workload, costing about $150,000.
Hardin said he wants the state legislature to come up with a solution to force Brice to process their own tickets so the cost burden doesn't fall on Columbus taxpayers.
"We can't have folks speeding through. It's not good or safe to have folks speeding through active school zones. But we also need to be fair in how we execute the law," Hardin said.
