State law requires that citations be issued within 14 days for vehicles registered in state, or 30 days for vehicles registered outside Maryland. The incident involved vehicles that were leased or rented.
The tickets involved citations issued to rented or leased vehicles. Apparently the county had built up a "backlog" of such citations to "transfer" to the vehicle renter/lessee, many of which were years old, and a county employee only recently asked vendor Xerox Corp to issue the tickets.
One motorist commented to WBALV:
"I laughed. I thought it was a joke," said Stan Constatine about his reaction when he realized the speed camera ticket he was about to pay showed a violation date of April 22, 2011.This past year State lawmakers were offered several proposals for bills to audit speed camera programs. However the leadership of he House Environmental Matters Committee refused to incorporate audits into the law due to opposition from state and local government agencies who did not want outside oversight.
"I think what should happen is there should be an audit of all of these citations," Constatine said.
The county's speed camera vendor, Xerox, forwarded Channel 11 News' questions to a Baltimore County representative, who said about 400 tickets were never mailed out to violators until now because of a glitch in Xerox's system.
Xerox Corporation is the same vendor who was involved in the speed camera accuracy issues that occurred in Baltimore City, which according to an audit may have resulted in as many as 10% of all citations issued by the city being in error. Xerox is the same vendor used by Montgomery County and the SHA.
