By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Missouri voters will decide whether to reinstitute a court fee that had been collected for nearly 40 years, but has now been ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court.
Amendment 6, on the ballot next week, would amend the Missouri constitution to include a three-dollar court fee to fund pensions for sheriffs and prosecutors.
State Sen. Rusty Black, a Republican from Chillicothe, sponsored the amendment during the legislative session after what he considers a baffling Supreme Court ruling that claims the fee is not part of an “administration of justice.”
“The plaintiffs were arguing that sheriffs had nothing to do with administration of justice, which to me doesn’t make sense,” Black tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “Who protects our judicial system inside courthouses? It’s sheriffs.”
The Missouri General Assembly approved the three-dollar court fee to fund the pensions of sheriffs and prosecutors in 1983. A lawsuit brought in 2015 challenged the constitutionally of fee.
“The Supreme Court ended up overturning that,” Black explains. “And when they overturned that, because in quotes, ‘sheriffs are not part of the administration of justice as found in our constitution,’ that made that fee illegal.”
The Missouri Supreme Court made its decision in 2021, throwing the financial system for undergirding the pension plans into uncertainty.
“If we don’t find another system, or if this doesn’t pass, then the retirement system, I think within eight of nine years will be defunct,” Black says.
Black says, at present, five percent of a sheriff’s salary goes into the retirement system. The court fee would fund the remainder.
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ and St. Joseph Post @StJosephPost.