OSAGE BEACH, Mo. — A proposed state law intended to address shady court practices in the Ferguson, Mo. justice system is not a good fit for the Lake, according to Osage Beach city leaders.
Last Thursday, the Board of Alderman agreed to send a letter to Lake of the Ozarks-area Missouri State Representatives asking them to oppose Senate Bill 572. The measure would limit the percentage of annual revenue cities can derive from fines and court costs for minor traffic and zoning and nuisance violations.
Last year, the Missouri Legislature reduced that percentage from 30 percent to 20 percent. Senate Bill 572 would further limit revenue by capping fines at $200. The Missouri Senate already has passed the bill, which is pending approval in the House of Representatives.
At Thursday’s Board of Alderman meeting, Osage Beach city officials said they oppose the bill. The board approved sending letters from Mayor Penny Lyons to Missouri Reps. Diane Franklin of Camdenton, Rocky Miller of Lake Ozark and David Wood of Versailles asking them to vote against the bill.
In the letter, Lyons said the bill, if passed into law, will hurt towns and cities across Missouri.
“It is too broad and affects our city when it is meant to address problems in St. Louis County,” Lyons wrote. “Our city and our sister cities at the Lake of the Ozarks play a significant role in Missouri’s recreational economy and second-home market. The safety and security of our residents and visitors is an issue of primary importance for us, and SB 572 unnecessarily interferes with our ability to enforce municipal codes at the local level of government.”
The letter stated that reducing municipal court fines from a maximum of $500 to $200 “dramatically impairs” the city’s ability to punish code violators, whose “trash in the yard, misuse of the property for a business in a residential zone, or peeling paint can ruin the livability of a neighborhood and impair the property value of the people unlucky enough to live next door.”
City officials fear that the lower fines would not give unscrupulous property owners enough incentive to correct code violations.
“Once the $200 citation is issued, violators have little or no incentive to remove the violations,” Lyons said.
The bill was proposed in reaction to the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation of racial unrest in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, after a young African-American man was shot and killed in an altercation with a police officer in 2014.
The incident ignited a firestorm of protests, looting and violence in and around St. Louis. The Justice Department determined, among other findings, that municipal courts in St. Louis County were profiteering from minor municipal code infractions, funding major chunks of suburban revenue via fines.
By limiting those fines, Senate Bill 572’s sponsor, Sen. Eric Schmitt of St. Louis County, hopes to stop that practice. But if the bill became law, it would apply to every municipality in the state.
Osage Beach City Attorney Ed Rucker fears that the sweeping reforms, aimed at making bad courts good, might instead make good courts ineffective.
“In St. Louis, any trust between the people and the municipal court system has been shattered,” Rucker said. “That doesn’t apply to us, but we don’t want to be collateral damage on that.”
He said limiting the fines allowed by city court removes the most effective tools cities have to combat nuisance and zoning law scofflaws.
In her letter to Jefferson City lawmakers, Mayor Lyons agreed.
“Cities cannot afford to use taxpayer dollars to clean private property and remedy unsafe and unsanitary condition, which damage entire communities,” she wrote. “This legislation will, over time, greatly affect the overall health, safety and property values of our neighborhoods.”
