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Montgomery County's speed camera program has landed in court once again — this time not because of a motorist appealing their speed, but from a twice-caught attorney who says the program violates of state law by allowing the contractor be paid on a per-ticket basis.

Driving his Toyota Sequoia southbound down Connecticut Avenue on Feb. 3, attorney Timothy P. Leahy was ticketed for driving more than 10 mph above the speed limit. He was ticketed again later that day driving northbound on Connecticut, about two blocks from where he was ticketed earlier, just north of Chevy Chase Circle.

Leahy, of the Bowie-based law firm Byrd and Byrd, is challenging the $40 tickets in Montgomery County Circuit Court, arguing that the county's contract with ACS State and Local Solutions Inc. runs afoul of the 2006 law that allowed Montgomery County to start its speed camera program. That law prohibits the contractor's fee from being based on the number of tickets issued.

"If a contractor operates a speed monitoring system on behalf of a local jurisdiction or agency, the contractor's fee may not be contingent on the number of citations issued or paid," according to the 2006 law.

The lawsuit calls for $20 million in damages. It has grown to include the cities of Gaithersburg and Rockville, who run their speed camera programs on "rider" contracts to the county's deal with ACS, and Chevy Chase Village, which owns the cameras that ticketed Leahy.

The county's contract stipulates that ACS be paid "$16.25 per ticket or $18,000 per month, whichever is greater." That breaks down to 1,108 citations per month before ACS would be paid more than the flat fee. The county averaged 15,000 citations per month in fiscal 2008, according to the Office of Legislative Oversight. That generated net revenue of about $6 million, which must be used for public safety and pedestrian programs, said Lt. Paul Starks, a police department spokesman.

The county now has 30 fixed speed camera sites and approximately 90 mobile sites being used or approved for future use.

On Aug. 26, Judge Ronald B. Rubin dismissed the case but gave Leahy 45 days to amend the complaint, which Leahy said he plans to do.

"The legal question is going to be, is ACS operating the system?" Leahy said.

The county is resolute that the police department — not ACS — is the "operator." But acknowledging the controversy, officials have moved to change the contract to eliminate the per-ticket payments.

"We're in the process of renegotiating our vendor contract," said Patrick K. Lacefield, spokesman for County Executive Isiah Leggett (D). "The way we do it now is perfectly legal. Basically, they [ACS] take the pictures, but we're the ones who figure out who gets ticketed. It's legal because we are in fact doing the citing, not the vendor. But we'll be removing any ambiguity there."

The imbroglio over the per-ticket payment had already caught the attention of state lawmakers before Leahy filed his lawsuit.

Earlier this year, Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler examined the county's speed camera contract and opined that it adheres to the legal requirements because it is the county that issues the citations.

"Of course, if the facts are different than how I have understood them, a reviewing court may well come to the opposite conclusion," Gansler (D) wrote in a March 5 letter to Del. Brian J. Feldman (D-Dist. 15) of Potomac.

The way Del. Saqib Ali understands those facts, ACS is being given incentive to catch more speeders and thereby generate more revenue for the county. He calls it a "per-ticket bounty."

"Montgomery County, what they're doing is legal, but what they're doing very much circumvents the intent of the legislation, in my opinion," said Ali (D-Dist. 39) of Gaithersburg. "They're exploiting a loophole. … They say they're not breaking the law, but clearly it doesn't pass the sniff test."

Regardless of the contract adjustments being made in Montgomery, the "loophole" needs to be closed before other counties or the state adopt speed cameras, Ali said. A statewide speed camera bill failed on the Senate floor on the final day of last session.

This session, Ali said he will push an amendment to the speed camera legislation to make the language more decisive, "to say operator, user, issuer … nobody's allowed to get paid on a per-ticket basis."

And regardless of the outcome of his lawsuit, Leahy is relieved to see that the county is rewriting the language of the contract.

"Win, lose or draw in terms of the damages, we have probably done a good thing here," he said. "I am much more comfortable as a citizen knowing that the contract is being renegotiated."