Rental cars, taxis and hotel occupancy taxes are high because the people paying the taxes generally aren't local citizens with the ability to vote against politicians raising the taxes.
Those taxes are designed to target business travellers, tourists, and other non residents who aren't in a position to mount an effective campaign against the taxes. Many police departments so something similar with traffic citations on highways. Some demand immediate payment, and most of the rest schedule court hearings weeks later when it's not cost effective for someone to return to court to fight the ticket. It's so lucrative many states have passed laws limiting the percentage of a local budget that can be collected in traffic fines. They force small cities to forward everything over a set percentage to the state.
Red light cameras are handled much the same way. Cities are forced to share excess revenue with the state. Even better, the red light camera equipment companies provide all the equipment to cities for free and do all the billing and collections. In return the equipment company gets as much as half the revenue from the .
