JOPLIN, Mo. — A nearly decade-old piece of legislation is sparking conversation among community leaders across Missouri.
Today, several of those people met with State Senator Jill Carter and State Representative Lane Roberts.
It used to be you could cite people, you could get people to clean their yards up, said Chief James Altic, Seneca Police Department.
Seneca police chief James Altic says changes enacted by the Missouri legislature nearly a decade ago changed that.
Right now, it’s virtually impossible to get them to do the things that, you want people to come to your community, you don’t want to drive into town and see the tall weeds, the brush, the trash they don’t take out, said Altic.
That’s just one of the issues that prompted this meeting with city leaders and Missouri State Senator Jill Carter and State Representative Lane Roberts.
What happened today was just a culmination of several conversations that we’ve had from municipalities to police officers that are local, said Senator Jill Carter.
Most of the discussion centered around Senate Bill 5 – legislation signed into law in 2015 dealing with municipal fines.
Like oftentimes happens, we’re just trying to bring that back down, to say, ok, that was an experiment in some public safety issues that maybe went too far, said Carter.
Through Monday’s meeting, Carter and Roberts were able to identify four specific areas that could potentially be addressed through legislation: creating penalties for failure to appear in municipal court, the time frames for a municipal judge to issue a warrant, and having to mail extra paperwork to defendants.
Seneca mayor Brad Storrs says Senate Bill 5 is impacting his town’s bottom line, specifically in the form of uncollected court debts.
He says the goal is for the town’s municipal court to be revenue neutral, neither making nor losing money. However, the uncollected debt is making that nearly impossible.
State representative Lane Roberts emphasizes that traffic enforcement isn’t about revenue but public safety. He highlights the importance of these efforts in keeping the public safe.
Carter and Roberts plan to work with legislative research to craft bills that could potentially be pre-filed this December.
Community Leaders in Missouri Address Impact of Senate Bill 5 on Municipal Fines and Safety, US
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