Press "Enter" to skip to content

Ball now in Nixon’s court on court reforms

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — After months of lauding the bill as a meaningful step in stopping abusive police and court systems, lawmakers finally advanced a bill to Missouri’s governor reducing the amount of cash local municipalities can collect through traffic fines and court fees.

Current state law allows a local city to collect as much as 30 percent of its annual revenue through tickets and related court fees. SB 5, sponsored by Sen. Eric Schmitt, would reduce that cap to 12.5 percent in St. Louis County and 20 percent around the state.

“This way of raising revenue, this taxation by citation, exists all across the state,” Schmitt said. “But I also recognize and have been doing this long enough to know that a lot of this work requires working with people with different backgrounds and perspectives. If you look for the best ideas people have and don’t care who gets the credit, you can accomplish a lot.”

Lawmakers advanced the bill after it spent more than a week in conference committee as lawmakers arm-wrestled over differences between House and Senate language. The bill also includes sweeping minimum standard that municipalities around the state must maintain or risk disincorporation, language added in the House.

House Speaker John Diehl, a Republican from St. Louis who supported the legislation, said St. Louis needed a lower cap because the majority of the “bad actors” in the state where in the St. Louis area.

“You want to talk about freedom? Let’s talk about ending taxation by citation,” Diehl said. “This bill has been vetted and reviewed more than any other bill in my seven years in the General Assembly.”

The legislation’s biggest detractors in the House objected to the difference in caps for the rest of the state versus the St. Louis area, calling the difference unfair and claiming the legislature was overreaching in punishing St. Louis County. In the Senate, where only 3 votes were cast against, the bill’s biggest critics said it would hurt small rural communities who have less sources of revenue than larger cities.

“To take on any reforms relating to how much revenue a municipality can get through traffic tickets and fines, to questions of disincorporation and municipal court reform, it’s a sweeping reform bill, and to have broad support in both chambers says a lot about the importance of the issue and a lot of good work a lot of people did along the way,” Schmitt said.

The bill received passed in the Senate 31-3 and the House 134-25, both well above the needed numbers to override a veto.