Linndale, often called a speed trap,[7][9] has been the site of the busiest, on a per-capita basis, Mayor’s Court in the State of Ohio.[10][11] The village in the past has successfully defended its legal right to enforce the 60 mph speed limit on the 422 yards of Interstate 71 within its jurisdiction under the “Home Rule” provisions of the state constitution.[9][12] The combination of traffic enforcement and Mayor’s Court has provided 80% of Linndale’s one million dollar annual budget, and underwritten its four full-time and ten part-time police officers.[13]
On December 20, 2012, Governor John Kasich signed a bill[14] into law effective March 22, 2013, which dissolved Linndale’s Mayor’s Court.[15] A sergeant in the Linndale police department stated that traffic cases would subsequently be handled by nearby Parma.
Personally I never agreed with the concept of a “Mayor’s Court”.
Gotta wonder how many more of those are out there. At least Ohio has a mechanism to keep them under control, as they used in dissolving New Rome, which was nothing but a speedtrap too.
When I took criminal law, I think he worked in another state though (?) about the story, a teacher said a group of lawmakers were pulled over by police, and the driver given a ticket.
The fact pattern was the same basically as in Linndale/New Rome.
In a session of the New Legislature, they passed a Bill to abolish the town!! Ha!!
In Florida it was the town (city?) of Waldo on SR301. AAA posted billboards outside of town and the state got involved passing a law limiting he % of revenues a municipality could get for traffic violations.
I go up that corridor every time I leave Florida and there’s a string of little speedtraps that one needs to know about. Starke, Waldo, Lawtey, Baldwin, and Callahan are all little towns where the limit drops from 60 to 35 for a few blocks. But at least they all drop the limit in 5 MPH increments instead of all in one go.
I know this particular corridor all to well. Drove it at least once a month for years. Never did get pinched, but saw lots who did. Even with the speed traps it is still the fastest, easiest way to get across the state going southwest to northeast.
Ah, yes, Linndale…I have been fortunate in remembering to slow to exactly 60 (or less) through that stretch, though you can usually see the police car sitting there from quite a distance away. But my son forgot one night, and got a ticket. Took us forever to actually FIND the building with the Mayor’s Court in it to go pay the fine, because the actual town is so small and hard to get to without, you know, an exit off the highway.
Even with the slower speed, it’s better than taking I-75 up to I-10 to I-95. More direct and more interesting. When going from Ft Myers to Raleigh, The FLA border is the halfway mark.
IIRC many years back, there was a story where a congresscritter or some such got a ticket on a stretch of highway that fell under a jurisdiction of a town that didn’t actually have an access onto the highway within it’s borders.
When he got back to session, he pushed through a ruling where a town had to have physical access inside their borders to be able to do traffic enforcement.
And as a warning, if you’re in Arkansas, watch your speed in Grannis. Avoid it like the plague if at all possible.
(I’ve looked a few times, but I have found no information about how all that was resolved. I believe the fire chief was charged with something a few weeks later, but I can’t find any articles from after that.)