In a growing number of small Colorado towns, the real winners from photo‑radar tickets are not the local governments that put their names on the citations, but the private companies that run the cameras and process the paperwork. Vendors have been taking home the bulk of the cash from mailed tickets, while towns are left with a slimmer slice of the pie and a whole lot of angry residents. That imbalance came into focus after reporters and municipal records reviewers dug through invoices, town ledgers and vendor contracts, revealing fees that carved away large chunks of gross revenue. Now a mix of refunds, contract rewrites and state scrutiny is forcing a new round of questions about whether automated enforcement is a safety tool or a money machine.
An investigation by 9NEWS found that, in several towns, the companies that operate cameras and process citations pulled in the majority of photo‑radar revenue. The reporting highlights Kersey, Mountain View, Wheat Ridge and Hudson as places where private firms ended up with a larger cut than the municipalities themselves. Town records and vendor invoices reviewed for the investigation show contractor payments sometimes exceeded what local governments kept for traffic safety efforts.
State law is supposed to keep systems like these on a short leash. As the Colorado General Assembly explains, penalties from photo‑speed‑van operations are capped, generally at $40 and doubled in school zones, and systems have to follow rules on posted warnings and other safeguards. Those guardrails have become rallying points for critics, who argue that some contracts and billing setups appear to sidestep the spirit, if not the strict letter, of the statute.
The loudest fallout so far has landed in Kersey. There, officials voted in January to refund more than $500,000 in $340 citations tied to a camera on Weld County Road 49. According to 98.5 KYGO, the refunds will go to drivers accused of traveling 25 miles per hour or more over the limit, and the paybacks are expected to take weeks to work through the system. Town leaders told residents they plan to fix the mismatch between how the camera was actually running and the caps laid out in Kersey’s own ordinance.
City officials who defend photo enforcement point to both safety concerns and budget pressures when explaining why they turned to cameras in the first place. Denverite reported that larger Colorado cities have leaned on parking and enforcement revenue as modest boosts to their budgets, even as they promote camera programs as tools to cut down on crashes. That same dynamic helps explain why smaller towns chose to outsource to specialized vendors rather than build their own in‑house citation processing systems.
Vendor invoices and public pushback
The paper trail behind the controversy is not subtle. Documents reviewed in the investigation show that one vendor, Emergent Enforcement Solutions (EES), billed Kersey about $359,170 for 1,282 hours of work in October 2025, with hourly processing rates listed near $280, while another vendor, DACRA, charges a few dollars per citation for verification and mailing, according to 9NEWS. The same review found that Hudson sent roughly half of its photo‑radar revenue to a vendor, Mountain View forwarded around 57 percent of its program receipts and Wheat Ridge kept an even smaller share.
EES owner Russel Sarpy told investigators, "my services are at no cost to your municipality," and said that "by law, we do not charge a rate based on citations issued," comments that appear in the reporting. Those statements, stacked up against the invoices and revenue splits, have only fueled more skepticism in town halls and online comment threads.
Legal and legislative fallout
The current automated vehicle identification systems statute outlines penalties and procedural protections, but the way local contracts are written has become a major point of contention. The state briefing on photo‑radar and red‑light camera rules lays out the caps and notification requirements that municipalities are supposed to follow, and lawmakers now say that loopholes in contract language are ripe for a legislative cleanup. A Republican state senator who helped draft the 2023 AVIS provisions told reporters that the existing arrangements "feel icky" and that he is working on a bill to toughen the law and close the contract gaps identified in the investigation.
What to watch next
Residents can expect more packed council meetings and closer reviews of vendor agreements as local leaders confront invoices, refund obligations and voter frustration. Some towns will be busy cutting checks and rewriting ordinances, while state lawmakers have signaled they may push new rules aimed at blocking per‑ticket pay structures in the future. For now, drivers who received camera citations are being urged to keep an eye on their town websites for refund forms, timelines and any updated hearing procedures.
