District Attorneys Also Push New York State to Renew School Speed Cameras

The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan District Attorneys demanded that New York State leaders pass a bill to turn the city's 140 speed cameras back on and to expand the program. The cameras have been shut off since the end of July.

"Let's not dicker around with excuses," Manhattan DA Cy Vance told reporters Tuesday. "Let's come back in a special session, get this done once and for all."

A spokesman for Gov. Cuomo's office told WNYC that a special session would be meaningless if the Assembly and Senate don't have any intention to vote on the bill.

And it appears they don't.

"We've said we'll extend the program," a spokesperson for State Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan told WNYC. "The Assembly and the governor, the ball's in their court."

But the spokesman said Senate Republicans will only vote to extend authorization for the 140 cameras New York City already has for another five years, not expand the number to 290 as the city and Assembly have proposed.

"That is nothing but hot air," a spokesperson for Assembly leader Carl Heastie, wrote in a statement in response to the Senate Republicans' position. "They should just pass one of the bills the Assembly has already passed and that all the advocates support." 

Some have called on the governor to issue an executive order to get the speed cameras turned back on, but the governor's office has given no indication that it would take that step.

“Senator Flanagan’s Trump-like game of deflections and misinformation is putting kids’ lives in danger," a spokesperson from Gov. Cuomo's office wrote in a statement. "The governor doesn’t need to call a special session — the Senate can go back to Albany on its own, do its job, and vote on this life-saving legislation that the Assembly already passed and the governor will sign today.”

School starts in less than a month.