Revenues the state collects from court fees have dropped significantly in recent years and state lawmakers may take steps this session to address it.
A lot of the court fee money goes to the state Regional Jail Authority which needs about $9 million a year to pay off the debt on its construction bonds. But the collected amount dropped below $8 million last year.
Regional Jail Authority Director Joe DeLong told lawmakers Tuesday bond insurers got nervous and the Regional Jail Authority responded by putting $11 million of the agency’s surplus into a back-up contingency fund but he says that can’t continue.
DeLong says something must be done to get residents to pay more of the court fees they are charged.
“There are fees that have been out there for quite a period of time that we could almost consider that if something’s not done to collect them, if there’s not an aggressive effort to collect them, we could almost consider them as people who were planning not to pay,” DeLong said.
Lawmakers will consider a bill during the upcoming regular session that would create an amnesty program for those who owe traffic citations. It would allow people with outstanding court fees from tickets before June 30, 2008 to pay $100 for the first ticket and $25 for every old ticket after that. In some cases those who owe could get their drivers’ licenses back.
The draft bill goes further allowing for counties to do what municipalities are allowed to do now, to get owed fee money from a person’s tax refund. The proposal takes an additional step that would allow the state Dept. of Administration to hire a bond collector to go after the owed money.
DeLong says he’s at a loss to explain how fee money has gone down when there are more people going to jail. He says the Regional Jail Authority used to get about $13 million a year.
Logan County State Senator Art Kirkendoll threw his support behind the bill at Tuesday’s meeting.
“I think this would be very smart for us to look at,” he said. “Finding a source of revenue for the regional jails is going to be tough.”
County commissions currently pay $48.80 a day for inmates from their counties housed in regional jails. The rate is scheduled to go down by 55-cents a day in July. DeLong says they don’t want to reach a situation where they have to raise per diem rates to pay for the construction bonds.
