Few New Yorkers would disagree that the safety of our children is a priority. Even before being signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month, the vote on what's known as the School Bus Camera Bill showed Albany lawmakers in unanimous agreement.

The new law authorizes cameras to be installed on the stop sign-arm of school buses to photograph and issue a ticket to the registered owner of vehicles who violate the law requiring them to stop when a school bus is stopped in the roadway with its red lights flashing.

The need is clear — during last year's Operation Safe Stop, a statewide program to target these infractions on a single day, the Department of Motor Vehicles reported 838 drivers being ticketed. The Governors Traffic Safety Committee estimates 50,000 drivers a day pass a stopped school bus.

Yet some details about the law raise questions. Most glaring is the fact that none of the revenue collected from protecting our children is specifically allocated to them, their safety or their education.

From a policy standpoint, Albany has set a precedent with this new law by not only establishing a new revenue stream for local government, but for the first time turning our school districts into the vessel for its collection. As currently written, the law only requires school districts to be reimbursed for costs relating to equipment and maintenance of the camera system. The remainder of the revenue from these violations is allocated to the village, town or county in which the violation occurred to dispense as they see fit.

This is, unfortunately, another case of a well-intended legislative goal being hijacked in New York by the opportunity for revenue. The MTA payroll tax of 2009 was implemented to help with a $1.8 billion budget shortfall. Despite this effort, the budget shortfall still exists and fares continue to increase. The state lottery was originally meant to provide supplemental funding for education; the revenue is now budgeted and calculated into school aid. Most recently, a tax on internet sales was supposed to help local businesses compete with their online competition. It became an excuse to reduce Aid and Incentives for Municipalities funding.

The blame for this kind of creative revenue raising isn't all on our governor and state lawmakers. New Yorkers bear some of the responsibility as well. We have a history of sitting silently while taxes are raised and revenue is collected under the guise of an objective that rarely, if ever, gets met.

Local legislators have already begun to suggest that the revenue generated from the implementation of this law will be needed to support the added administrative costs of the county and courts. This reasoning is misleading when considering the courts are funded by taxes and their budget is not determined by the amount or quantity of tickets issued. In actuality, under this new legislation there is an increased burden on the school districts that choose to participate. An entire section of the legislation's text describes the reporting and administrative responsibilities of the school district.

Over the next few months, as schools contemplate whether to adopt the bus camera technology in their districts, the issue will no doubt be simplified to a debate over whether we want increased safety for our children. The reality is that school board members, myself included, are being put in a very difficult position of deciding on an increase in school safety coupled to the collection of a new revenue stream for local government. Which is, potentially, exactly where lawmakers want us: Creating revenue for them that they themselves don't have to vote on.

Before this new revenue stream finds budgetary dependency, our local lawmakers can provide a solution by allocating it to go where it should — to our children. Over the next few weeks and months we'll see if they do it.