ST. LOUIS – When SB 5 passed last spring with bipartisan support, it showed an effort by bill sponsor Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale, and the rest of the legislature to curtail abuses of authority by small municipalities across the state, but particularly in the St. Louis metro area.
Officials from two of those municipalities, Normandy and Cool Valley, struck back recently with a lawsuit against the piece of legislation, which was signed into law by Gov. Jay Nixon.
Schmitt says Normandy and Cool Valley were two of the worst townships in the state when it came to traffic ticket schemes designed to fleece residents and those passing through the area and use the money to prop up hyperlocal governments which usually would not survive via regular revenue systems like taxes.
“This is not a lawsuit against our reform, it is a lawsuit against the people, especially the poor and disadvantaged who have been treated like ATMs by these officials, just so they can continue to fund their bloated budgets and bloated bureaucracies,” Schmitt said at a press conference held by him and Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, one of many proponents of the bill in the Senate. “For years, these officials have abused taxpayers by extracting every penny they could squeeze from them through traffic ticket schemes. They used taxpayer dollars to fight our reforms in the Missouri legislature and now they are using taxpayer dollars to fund this anti-reform lawsuit.”
However, Schmitt noted that there was a history of applying differences in enforcement to different parts of the state.
Normandy and Cool Valley argue in their lawsuit that St. Louis County municipalities face an unfair burden claims because the ticket revenue cap for those municipalities is 12.5 percent compared to 20 percent for the rest of the state.
“Throughout the whole legislative process, these city officials came to Jefferson City harping about how this was completely a matter of public safety,” said Rep. Robert Cornejo, R-St. Peters. “With today’s lawsuit, these officials’ true colors came to light that this is truly all about the money. There were a lot of things that we left out of Senate Bill 5 last year because we did not want the bill to become too big and burdensome. However, with the upcoming legislative session just over a month away, I know that myself and many of my colleagues will look to bring those other issues back to the forefront to address these municipalities.”
