We all want to see our community in the media in a positive light, but news coming out of our region over the past year is not the way we want to showcase our community to the world. The St. Louis region is a great part of nation because of our people and families. Unfortunately, instead of serving our citizens, a broken municipal court system has disrespected its citizens by treating them like ATMs. This breakdown in government has created a deep mistrust between the citizens and the government that exists to serve them.
In 2013, the municipal courts in St. Louis City and County filled their piggy banks with more than $54,000,000 in fines and fees. The combined total of fines and fees collected by Missouri municipal courts in 2013 was more than $124,000,000. According to this figure the St. Louis region accounted for nearly 44 percent of the fees.
Many municipalities are generating this revenue through a system of traffic ticket tricks and schemes designed to extract more and more from our citizens. Sadly these schemes are little more than ATMs for bloated big government budgets that have hit the poor especially hard.
I was honored to champion the effort to reform the municipal court system in our state in an effort to restore the trust between citizens and their government.
Current law allows Missouri municipalities to fund their government operations with up to 30 percent of the revenue collected from traffic tickets and fines. One of the big issues with the current law was municipalities made it a goal to reach the 30 percent limit, and in many cases, exceed it. This has left many citizens wondering if they were being pulled over for a legitimate purpose, or to meet the revenue quota of some bureaucrat in their local city hall.
The citizens suffering the most from this misuse of the law are low-income Missourians. Bureaucrats have treated these economically disadvantaged citizens like numbers on a balance sheet for more government spending, while the family hit with the fine might be facing a family budget crisis or even jail time if they don’t pay the bureaucrat.
I sponsored Senate Bill 5 to fix this problem, and our bipartisan legislation was overwhelmingly passed by the Missouri General Assembly. Senate Bill 5 reduces the amount of revenue cities can raise from traffic tickets from 30 percent down to 20 percent, and 12.5 percent for St. Louis County municipalities. The municipal courts in St. Louis County are held to tougher standard because they are the worst abusers of the current law funding their bureaucracies through what I call taxation by citation.
Local governments should do what all Missourians have to do during lean times and make the difficult choices on what to cut in their budgets. They should not be targeting citizens with fees and fines to fill their budget shortfalls or their shortfalls in leadership.
By limiting how much a government can fund its government from traffic tickets, residents will be able to begin to trust their elected officials again. Make no mistake, this change will not erase all of the issues facing our local governments. Over time, a more accountable government will be a better government, one that residents will be proud to look to for leadership.
Senate Bill 5 also requires St. Louis County municipalities to meet certain minimum standards. These include having an annual balanced budget, auditing the city’s finances and if the city has a police department, requiring it to be accredited. These are common sense standards that residents expect of their cities and standards that our cities should be meeting.
These minimum standards will only have a positive impact for residents. If a city is going to exist and have government officials paid by taxpayers run the city, then it should meet certain, basic standards. By ensuring cities meet all these standards, residents will live in a community they can be proud of and know that their government is there to serve them.
Another important aspect of Senate Bill 5 addresses some issues in our municipal courts. The bill requires municipal courts to maintain certain procedures, with the main goal being to eliminate debtors’ prisons and to give residents a sense of accountability from the courts. Municipal courts would be prohibited from placing someone in jail because he or she could not pay for a broken taillight or expired tags. Courts will also be required to offer alternative payment plans and community service options to accommodate individuals who cannot pay their entire fine all at once.
Senate Bill 5 also includes a provision that would prohibit an additional charge to be levied for a person’s failure to appear for a minor traffic violation. The court can still require the person to answer for the initial violation, but could no longer stack another charge and another fine onto the original violation. Too often, municipal courts were taking advantage of people who missed court, many times for family or work obligations, by adding this additional fine.
We must work to make sure our courts always fair and always accountable to our residents. The reforms to our municipal courts in Senate Bill 5 will go a long way in improving the fairness and accountability of our courts. Just like lowering the amount of a city’s budget that can come from traffic tickets and requiring cities to meet minimum standards, reform to our municipal courts represents one step out of many that our region must take to fully heal. I am confident that these changes approved by the legislature in a bipartisan manner will play a big role in changing St. Louis for the better.
I strongly urge Governor Nixon to sign Senate Bill 5. Our communities will be stronger with this legislation, and residents will know their governments exist to serve them, not the other way around.
State Sen. Eric Schmitt is a Republican from Glendale.
