Actually, most of Ferguson’s revenue came from fines levied against people who were not Ferguson residents - basically from speed traps targeting commuters. Who were disproportionally minorities, of course.
It does seem most likely that Ferguson will go Unincorporated, and end up under control of the St. Louis County government.
That’s actually another interesting legal question (to me, at least :))
As above, one of the key sticking points here is whether the consent decree is to remain in effect in case another entity takes over. So apparently, if Ferguson agrees that it does, then it does. But suppose Ferguson unincorporates itself and dissolves its police force etc. before the legal fighting is over. Could the county then say “we have no connection to any abuses that the Ferguson police and political system might have perpetuated”, and thus sidestep the whole issue, or can the DOJ force the county to “pay” for the abuses of Ferguson? (Ostensibly, the notion for all these reforms is that the Town can’t be trusted based on their record of prior abuse. But if the DOJ hasn’t made that same case against the county, then logically it shouldn’t apply to them.)
Fines only made up 10% of the city’s revenue stream. Sales and property tax made up 45% back in 2010 with Sales revenue remaining stable to 2014 but Property tax revenue doubling.
Something has to give. Like, say, that mishmash of St. Louis metro area municipalities might need to be consolidated. The constitutional rights of the citizens takes precedence over the desire of local notables to have power.
The citizens also have the right to self-determination in their local government. If the citizens of Ferguson do not want to consolidate with other towns, or be subsumed into a larger County government, they shouldn’t be forced to do so by the federal government.
If the existence of those local governments is predicated on exploiting the citizenry to enrich a subset of the population, then the interests of those running those governments are no longer to be respected.
For sake of argument, let’s say that Ferguson is ticketing people willy nilly for all sorts of petty stuff. The fines still go into the city coffers, so it’s still the citizens’ money.
Unless you have a cite that “a subset of the population is being enriched”?
ISTM that there are two separate issues which are being conflated.
The first is whether Ferguson engaged in various discriminatory practices. The DOJ is asserting that they did, and while I’m rather skeptical of the DOJ and their investigation, let’s assume for purposes of this discussion that they are correct.
The second is whether the only way to correct these abuses is to enact the specific remedies that the DOJ is demanding. This is where I think you need to be realistic about budgetary realities. I have a feeling - and it’s not much more than that, as I’m not all that familiar with the relevant laws and case histories - that a judge would be more inclined to take these into account than the (highly political) DOJ would. (Specifically, I think the DOJ is more interested in making a strong statement on a national level about a national issue than they are in improving the lives of actual people in Ferguson.)
Well, it’s important to bear in mind that Ferguson would not be agreeing to anything in the consent decree that the DOJ can’t get in a regular court order.
Can you elaborate?
It was my understanding is that the way these consent decrees work is “agree to this and we don’t battle it out in court, otherwise we do”, same as any other out-of-court settlement. In which case it would be unclear as to what would be imposed by a court until an actual ruling. It sounds like you’re suggesting that it works differently here.
The citizens’ money, which pays the salaries of the city government officials and the police. The same police that the DOJ found were engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination and racial profiling. The same city government that the DOJ has accused of misusing the police to generate municipal revenue. There were protests and riots, if you recall.
Why exactly would it cost $10 million? Just stopping various abusive practices shouldn’t cost anything at all.
But a reasonable solution to me would be that Ferguson contracts with Saint Louis County to provide police protection. Why wouldn’t this work?
It sounds like Ferguson can levy property taxes (which is true of municipalities in almost all of the States), and sales taxes (true in a smaller subset of the states.) I’m not sure if they can levy income taxes, in a lot of states they are not allowed to do that. The simple answer is the money to cover lost fine revenue would have to come from property taxes.
I don’t think most cities get to funding large percentages (and 10% is somewhat large) of their budget with fines because they want to, I think it tends to happen as a city goes to shit. Fixing a busted city with higher property taxes is a poor formula–because people can easily avoid those taxes by simply leaving. That’s how Detroit got stuck in a “death spiral” they needed more revenue to fix their fiscal and management problems, the only way to get more revenue would’ve been to raise taxes, but Detroit was losing population due to poor economics and other causes, so raising property taxes would’ve just pushed more residents out, thus ultimately lowering revenue again. There isn’t an easy way out once it gets to that point. I’m not as familiar with Ferguson’s financial situation as Detroit’s, but it sounds like it’s pretty grave if deincorporation is being considered.
The collapse of a town can be difficult because towns often have outstanding bonds, issued when the town was in a time of better economic conditions, but that bond payment is still due even when you’ve lost tax base and revenue.
OK, so following your hypothetical, Ferguson’s mayor or chief of police calls you up and says “Uh, everything’s under control. Situation normal. Uh, we had a slight [law enforcement] malfunction, but uh… everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?”
Its seems to me that the only thing you can do for free is agree with him. Anything else is going to cost money.
The butthurt outcry over the poor brave police being sacked.
Part of the agreement was large raises for police, to attract more qualified personnel, separating out the municipal court from the police department, and paying a monitor. Ferguson is running $2.5 million in deficit since the riots.
AFAICT the Feds would sue Ferguson if they don’t consent to the agreement. Closing the police department and farming out safety services to the county was one of the suggested alternatives to the agreement.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s unclear what would be imposed by the court. It’s not unclear what could be imposed by a court (at least it won’t be to the DOJ civil rights division and Missouri government attorneys). So the city would not agree to, say, provide every citizen with a candy machine, since that’s not a remedy the court could impose in the absence of an agreement.
To be clear, I’m pretty sure it’s not being considered by Ferguson, nor apparently by the DOJ. But, locally, speculation is that’s where it’ll end up - Ferguson will try to fight the DOJ, and not having the funds to do so will lead to disincorporation, or perhaps as a consideration in the inevitable court case.
FWIW, the city might agree to provide every citizen with a candy machine even if the DOJ couldn’t get it in court just to avoid having to fight about it in court. But that’s not really germane to the point here. Nor, AFAICT, was your post. In light of your explanation here, I don’t understand what point you were making in your prior post.
What I suggested was that Ferguson might get a better deal in court than they would get from the DOJ because the court might be more inclined to look at what’s in the best interests of the citizens of Ferguson - which would include the costs - than the DOJ which has a more narrow focus on the national headlines about the issue of police tactics. In what way did you intend to respond to that?
2010 Actuals / 2012 Budgeted
Sales Tax - $5.9M / $5.9
Property Tax - $1.2M / $1.9M
Fines - $1.5M / $2.0
2012 Actuals /2014 Budgeted
Sales Tax - $5.9M / $6.0
Property Tax - $1.9 / $2.2M
Fines - $2.2M / $2.7
2014 Actuals / 2015 Forecast / 2016 Budgeted
Sales Tax - $6.0M / $6.3 / $6.3
Property Tax - $2.4M / $2.3M / $2.3 M
Fines - $2.0M / $1.0M / $1.0 M
The city fully expected to keep bleeding Property Tax and Fines for all they were worth. Now to be fair, in 2013 they were projecting $3.2M in fines to be collected in 2015.
Overall Revenue grew 20% (2010-2014) while General Expenditures grew by 18%. The problem has been the massive growth in Capital Improvement Sales Tax Fund which has grown 439% since over the same period. If they dropped that expense back down to the $1-2M they had in 2010/11 they’d free up 4-6 million dollars. Now maybe the fund is a temporary expense that would naturally fade away and allow them to rebuild a rainy day fund but if it isn’t then that would be where the attention should go.