There are plenty of concerning items in this bill related to automatic enforcement of school zone speed limits, but I voted against it because it was drastically changed in the Senate in the middle of the night on the last day of session and I had no time to understand those changes before the vote was called.
The original bill, passed by the House in the 2025 session, allows for automated speed limit enforcement in school zones using recording devices. There is a potential public safety benefit to this legislation, but it also changes language specifically to allow for recording devices (where previously photographic devices were approved).
HB 651:
To be clear, I voted against this bill because there was no time to review it before the vote was called. This bill passed the House in 2025 before I was elected to office. During the 2026 session, the Senate amended it and passed it back to the House in the early morning hours of April 3, during the last legislative day, where it was called for a vote almost immediately.
I do not vote for bills that I don't understand, and there was no time allotted to fully understand how this bill had changed, so I voted No.
After reviewing the bill post-session, my concerns with the bill are because it seems to open the door to more automated surveillance by law enforcement. The highlighted case here seems fine: automatically enforcing school speed limits during school hours. The bill also contains a lot of protections and new accountability measures in case the automatic enforcement capability is abused.
However, I am hearing many concerns from constituents about automated surveillance by law enforcement using Flock cameras, and this seems to encourage that type of surveillance. I do not see any language in the bill protecting public data so I likely would have voted against this anyway.
