Governor Jay Nixon has sketched out what he calls "clear areas for improvement" in Missouri’s municipal court system in the wake of the U.S. Justice Department’s blistering report on the police and city courts in Ferguson. So far Nixon is focusing primarily on beefing up the 1995 Mack’s Creek law.
In an address to the Missouri Bar on Friday, March 6, Nixon described the court systems of Ferguson and other towns that use police and courts to generate revenue as having gone awry.
“This is gonna continue to get a significant amount of my attention and the legislature’s attention and the courts’ attention…these are real problems that affect the trust in the system and ones we’re gonna spend serious time trying to work on,” Nixon said.
Nixon says he wants to strengthen current law, which limits cities and towns to basing no more than 30 percent of their budgets on traffic fines. He told the Missouri Bar that a Senate bill to further shrink those caps is a good start.