Bexar County commissioners approved $11,480 in refunds Tuesday for motorists who paid speeding citations issued through an automated traffic enforcement system that the Texas attorney general later determined lacked legal authority.
The citations were issued in February and March 2025 through a free standing camera-equipped lidar, or light detection and ranging, system used by the Precinct 3 Constable Office under Constable Mark Vojvodich. The system used remote sensing and cameras to photograph vehicles and license plates, allowing citations to be mailed to motorists without a traditional traffic stop.
In February, Attorney General Ken Paxton concluded Texas law does not authorize constables to use automated traffic-enforcement systems to issue speeding citations by mail. The opinion found speeding citations require an interaction between an officer and an alleged violator.
Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace Julie Bray Patterson, whose court handles the payment of citations, told commissioners the system operated for roughly six weeks and generated 516 citations before concerns about its legality prompted county officials to halt processing the citations and seek guidance from the Texas Attorney General’s Office.
“Once our office heard that a request from the district attorney’s office had been made to the Attorney General’s office as to the legality of these tickets,” she said. “We stopped processing them, we stopped it right then.”
Nonetheless, 57 motorists had either already paid the citation outright, completed driving safety courses or entered deferred disposition programs. Patterson said they had expected an opinion to be given by the AG by last August.
“That didn’t happen, but it came earlier this spring,” she said. “ What that opinion said was that the tickets that were given in this particular manner, they’re not legal.”
Following the ruling, Patterson said her office began working with prosecutors to dismiss all 516 citations generated through the program. The county is now also attempting to reverse convictions for 31 motorists who paid the citations outright, causing the violations to be entered on their driving records.
“We’ve reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety, earlier this month to request that those convictions be reversed, they have not answered yet,” She said. “We want to make sure folks aren’t penalized for something they shouldn’t have gotten a ticket for in the first place.”
Once that process is complete, the county plans to pursue expungement so the citations no longer appear on drivers’ records.
How did it happen?
For Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores, the refunds addressed only part of the problem. She questioned how the system was deployed without oversight.
“I’m just baffled, how this happened in the first place,” Precinct 1 Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores said. “I just don’t know how a law enforcement elected official or agency is doing something, and it turns out it was illegal.”
Patterson said she could not answer for the constable on how the decision to use the cameras unfolded, her office was not involved in the decision making process. Vojvodich was not present at the meeting and did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.
Clay-Flores questioned Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody on whether he was aware of the decision from the constable to use the camera system. Moody largely focused his response on paying back the fees and reversing the effects on drivers’ records.
“I think this is ministerial at this point,” Moody said. “We just need to make sure that if tickets were issued using a system that has since been ruled that it can’t be utilized, that we make those individuals whole. That’s what we’re going to do here.”
Clay-Flores pushed back on that notion, citing the financial burden of a citation on constituents created by the ticketing system.
“I think this is more than ministerial. I think this is huge,” she said. “It’s not just, ‘I’ll just erase it,’ It could have cost someone to take the day off. … Everyone doesn’t have however much money tickets cost, everyone just doesn’t have extra dollars laying around.”
Larry Roberson, chief of the county’s Civil Division, told commissioners the issue goes beyond the use of the system itself.
“That equipment was procured and implemented without the court’s knowledge, so the court wasn’t aware, and I think that’s the bigger issue,” Roberson said.
The equipment was given to the constables office for free by the vendor, commissioners had no opportunity to weigh in on the legality of the matter, Roberson said. He added that legal experts in the court had already known there was no authority to implement the cameras.
“The legal experts kind of understand, ‘Hey, look, there was no authority to do that, there was already an existing AG opinion that had addressed this issue in another part of Texas,’” he said.
