Red Lights, Green Cash: How a Florida Legislator Boosted School Bus Cameras and Benefited Her Family

In The Tributary, reporter Nandhini Srinivasan. First report Oct. 24, 2024, updated Nov. 4, 2024. To read the full story go here.

Florida Rep. Vicki Lopez’s votes benefited her son’s employer as she tried to help BusPatrol win new laws and contracts.

Personal connections, aggressive lobbying and hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions fueled the rapid rise of an obscure school bus camera vendor, BusPatrol, which quickly became a major player in a niche industry that didn’t exist in Florida until last year.

That success represented a remarkable turnaround for a company with a troubled history of allegations that it values revenue over public safety and opportunity over ethics.

BusPatrol’s reversal in fortunes, already evident in other states, echoes the comeback of Florida state Rep. Vicki Lopez, once a down-and-out Lee County commissioner, with whom BusPatrol is inextricably linked.

Last year, Lopez co-sponsored a bill allowing cameras on school buses statewide. Within months, her family had cashed in on the new industry through a web of connections built with BusPatrol, which stands to make millions from traffic tickets.

A Tributary investigation found a familiar pattern between Lopez and BusPatrol — one of overlapping personal, professional, and political interests – that evokes past allegations of ethical impropriety that have dogged both.

And:

The BusPatrol Revenue Machine

BusPatrol’s business model has proven highly lucrative—largely built on the revenue generated from citations issued by its cameras. In Florida and beyond, the company has positioned itself as a leader in school bus safety, but questions persist about whether its primary focus is public safety or profit.

In Miami-Dade, the company’s cameras led to 11,500 citations in the first two weeks. BusPatrol keeps 70% of the revenue from every $200 citation issued. At that rate, BusPatrol stands to make about $3.2 million a month in revenue.

In Hillsborough County, the company estimated its cameras led to 2,500 to 3,000 citations in the first week. The company gets $225 a month for each of the about 840 school buses equipped with cameras. It also receives $65 for every fine issued.

If the county continues issuing about 3,000 citations a week, the company stands to make about a million dollars a month in Hillsborough.

BusPatrol has repeatedly faced allegations that local governments use its cameras to wrongfully and excessively issue citations.

The company faces a federal class-action complaint in New York for issuing citations without evidence. News reports in New York, Massachusetts and Pittsburgh have also reported that drivers were fined despite not breaking the law. 

Pittsburgh-based television station WPXI reported last year that the station had received complaints from viewers that BusPatrol’s cameras were wrongfully citing people with $300 penalties. 

In New York, after an appellate supreme court decision that BusPatrol’s cameras provided “insufficient evidence”, about 8,000 tickets in Suffolk County were dismissed. The state changed its bus camera law, and Suffolk County created a more extensive process to review citations from BusPatrol’s cameras.

Last month, Newsday reported Suffolk County and the Town of Hempstead in New York issued  nearly 250,000 tickets last year. That means in one year, one citation was given for every nine residents of the area. In two years, BusPatrol made more than $20 million off of those tickets in Hempstead and Suffolk County.

Suffolk County’s comptroller issued a report in June about BusPatrol’s operation. “When you get under the hood you see how inefficient and chaotic the implementation truly was,” he told Newsday. The report suggested the county strengthen its ethics laws to prevent officials from going on to work for companies like BusPatrol. 

It also found that of about 200,000 citations it looked at, about 1,600 were dismissed when the drivers contested them. However, the report also said the data suggested tickets had “improved driving behavior around school bus stops in Suffolk County.”

In Suffolk County, BusPatrol similarly hired a legislator’s son as a lobbyist, along with the elected prosecutor, his chief of staff, a state senator, a county lawmaker and other top county officials as outside counsel, lobbyists and top executives, according to an investigation by Newsday.

One of those former Suffolk County officials lobbied Miami-Dade and Hillsborough on behalf of BusPatrol, according to county records.