On the Ballot | Court Fees to Support Law Enforcement Salaries & Benefits

Introduction

Amendment 6, which asks voters to decide whether to amend the Missouri Constitution to allow state courts to charge administrative fees to provide pensions and other compensation to former sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys, and circuit attorneys, is on Tuesday’s ballot. The amendment is in direct opposition to a unanimous 2021 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that deemed a $3 charge for all court cases in the state to fund sheriffs’ retirement benefits unconstitutional. This measure was added to the ballot by the Missouri General Assembly during the final day of its spring legislative session.

[Video Transcript]

Nick Haines- Now of all the issues on the ballot, perhaps The strangest and most befuddling is Amanda 6 which is why I left it to the end. It sounds innocent enough, it reads, ” shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to preserve who could be against that funding of law enforcement personnel. 

To be against that? Well, what it actually does, it charges offenders convicted of crimes in Missouri with a $3 to $4 fee to pay for sheriff’s pensions, retirement funds, prosecuting attorneys, it seems kind of audacious, I was just wondering do we know where are these prisoners getting all this money to be paying for those sheriff’s pensions?

Meg Cunningham – Yeah that’s something we’re hearing from proponents is you know this is baked into the court fees. This is something that they see as really an administrative cost ultimately funneled to those retirement systems, but we do know, of course, that prisoners in Missouri are disproportionately low-income or living in poverty. $3-$4 really adds up, and the state does have the power to, you know, track down those dollars, which is ultimately a cost to every taxpayer. 

Nick Haines—Why limit yourself there, Brian? If you can have prisoners pay for the sheriff’s pensions, why not have them pay for a new Royals Downtown Ballpark, for instance? I mean, is there any limit here? 

Brian Ellison- I knew you’d find a way to work the ballpark into today’s conversation. Nick, I think that’s an argument that opponents might very likely make. If we start adding a few here and a fee there rather than taking a more comprehensive approach to taxation and budgeting, where does it end and is that really what’s best for the state? 

Nick Haines: Matthew and Beth, Are there really any limitations on what you can actually place on the ballot. It seems a lot of things we’ve been going through on this show that you can basically put anything you want in front of Voters. 

Beth Vonnahme: Well there are limitations in the sense that you have to get enough people to sign on to those petitions. Whether it’s the voters or it’s lawmakers, you have to get enough people to sign on to put it on a ballot, so there’s at least some minimal support out there, but it doesn’t appear to be that there’s all that many limitations.

Matthew Harris: Speaking of that idea of limitations, I think it’s important to know the reason this is coming before voters. Is that the Missouri Supreme Court said a few years back that these fees were unconstitutional because they were not directly related to the administration of justice and that’s the very reason that the voters are going to have a say on this. 

Meg Cunningham: Well we’ve seen the legislature pick up the penny up until this point, allocating funds. We’ve Sheriff’s themselves paying 5% into those funds every year. But budgets are extremely constrained when we’re at the county level and there’s a lot of officials that are concerned about the excitedness over tax cuts in Jefferson City and they’re saying okay, well what about our County jails?

[End Transcript]