“Taxation by citation”

Missouri lawmakers are discussing a bill that would discourage speed traps and excessive municipal reliance on fines by providing that revenue from traffic citations could not exceed 10 percent of a town’s revenues, down from 30 percent currently. [St. Louis Public Radio]

Former St. Louis County Police Chief Tim Fitch testified in favor of Senate Bill 5 Wednesday before the senate committee on local government.

“We are not supposed to be in the business, in law enforcement, of generating revenue for the cities,” Fitch said. “I think, personally, municipal courts should be able to recover their costs, but they shouldn’t be profit generators. It’s not a business; you’re not supposed to be able to buy chairs for the mayor’s office with traffic ticket fines.”

The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Glendale), cited the way traffic citations can snowball with late fees, doubling or tripling of fines, arrest after missed court dates, and loss of jobs. Many towns, on the other hand, don’t want to lose the revenue:

City officials, including a few mayors such as Cool Valley Mayor Viola Murphy, testified against the bill.

“You have money that comes in, but it goes right back out,” Murphy said. “It goes back out to different funds that are needed … I wouldn’t want to see (the) battered women’s fund cut; I wouldn’t want to see police training cut.”

11 Comments

  • Cool Valley Mayor Viola Murphy testified… ” wouldn’t want to see (the) battered women’s fund cut; I wouldn’t want to see police training cut.”

    And i certainly wouldn’t want *my* pay cut. (Added by me in case its not absolutely clear)

    Apparently Cool Valley has a population of 1,196 in 2010. If they have more than 1 police officer to train, then they could probably do with a bit of cleanout…

  • Yes, yes, if we don’t write big traffic tickets to those crazy speeders, then women will be battered in the streets.
    Mayor Murphy is invoking the Washington Monument shutdown syndrome on a local scale. Always, always cut the most visible programs for the most needy.

  • “I wouldn’t want to see (the) battered women’s fund cut; I wouldn’t want to see police training cut.”

    That’s a nice car ya got there, mister. I wouldn’t want to see it . . . scratched and dented.

  • Are the proposed and current values in the first paragraph accurate?

  • Sorry, fault mine on typo, would reduce from 30 to 10 percent. Fixed now.

  • @Spodula,

    The national average for police officers per capita is 17 per 10K. So Cool Valley with a little over 1K pop should have 2 officers.

  • @MattS
    “The national average for police officers per capita is 17 per 10K. So Cool Valley with a little over 1K pop should have 2 officers with assault rifles and an armored personnel carrier.”

    Fixed it for you. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

  • @D,

    No, you’re wrong. Cool Valley covers only 0.47 square miles. They only need two slingshots and one bicycle to share between them.

  • Since they only need 2 officers (based on per capita formulae) one of them could be a canine… He’s cheaper, y’know…

  • […] County woes? Not so fast [Jesse Walker] Would it help if the towns went broke? [Megan McArdle, related on “taxation by citation”] St. Louis Post-Dispatch has gathered its coverage of the […]

  • They should probably just contract with the county sheriff or police department for 80 hours per week of patrol and investigator time. Avoids a lot of the overhead that increases the cost of just two officers.