COMMENTARY: Reduce Excessive, Oppressive Court Fees

MONEY FROM LEGAL FINES FLOWS IN TOO MANY DIRECTIONS; TOO LITTLE GOES TO JUSTICE FUND

Our excessive, oppressive court fees should be reduced. What we do charge should go to the courts, not for everything under the sun.

The Legislature’s in session. Now’s the time to fix this.

The issue’s simple. It’s just painful. Weaning ourselves from a money supply always is.

We’ve let court fees pay for everything from police to state building renovations. I could make an argument for fees going to police. But seriously: 28 state agencies and programs get fee money. These include a public health fund, an Arkansas State Police retirement fund and a highway safety special fund.

My personal favorite is $990,000 to renovate the Justice Building on the state Capitol grounds. That’s something that should have been paid for by the General Improvement Fund. That didn’t happen, because your state Legislature puts a lot of General Improvement money every session into local projects such as fi xing roofs on senior centers all over the state. Fixing roofs on senior centers is a mighty fine thing, but giving lawmakers checks to hand out isn’t what the General Improvement Fund was created for.

Now, the Administration of Justice Fund, where all the court fees go, is fl at broke. That’s the fund that’s supposed to pay court reporters and others who actually work in the courts.

You know, the places where we administer justice.

That’s why it’s called the Administration of JusticeFund, after all.

Think about that: The feefunded account is so broke, the governor and the state attorney general had to tap into their offices’ emergency funds to cover court costs last year. At the same time, we have billboards showing a young guy getting a breathalyzer test beside the words “He just blew $10,000.” We’ve all seen the TV commercials, too.

If stiff fines deter people from driving drunk, that’s great. The problem is, how can courts have fines and fees like that and still be flat broke? The answer is clearly not that we’re charging too little in fines and fees. We are simply spending the money on too many things.

Simple problem, simple to fix? Not really. In fact, not even close.

People who show up in courts to pay court fines don’t have the best lobbyists. They got socked with fees precisely because they are in a lousy position to argue. They don’t even have anything much in common except a court record.

Cities and others who get the fee money know how to lobby. They do it well.

I don’t blame the cities one bit. You can’t blame a politician for going after any pot of money he fi nds any more than you can blame your dog for eating a steak you leave beside the grill.

The problem is us. We’ve let this system of raising fees on helpless people run its course because the end result is less taxes for us.

More than 20 percent of the police department budget in the city of Lincoln, for instance, come from the courts.

Removing some or all of the last 1.5 percent of the state sales tax on grocerieswould be a fine thing, but wouldn’t really make a difterence in anyone’s life.

Not having to pay a $1,000 fine on a misdemeanor charge, or a $25-a-month fine while on probation, or a $250 DNA collection fee often would make a real difference to someone trying to make ends meet without resorting to crime or stay out of jail for not being able to pay fees.

About 1,500 people a year are jailed in Washington County alone just for failure to pay their court-imposed fees. Argue if you want that most of them are dodgers.

Say 90 percent of them are if you insist. That would still mean that 150 people go to jail each year out of simple inability to pay in Washington County alone.

Also keep in mind that at least some of these court fees are levied upon people who are found not guilty or who were arrested on charges that were later dropped.

There’s something wrong when we pay for our justice system in such an unjust way. Justice should be blind. Democracy shouldn’t. And we should all try to make things come out evenly on the scales.

DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.

Opinion, Pages 12 on 01/27/2013

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