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 million. 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.
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.
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.
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.
The bill also 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.
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 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.
