Taxation by citation undermines trust in city governments By Jennifer McDonald, For the Express-News Publish

By Jennifer McDonald of the Institute for Justice. Excerpt:

"When Valerie Gonzales was jailed for 45 days, it wasn’t because she had committed a serious crime; it was because she was poor. Despite working multiple jobs, Gonzales could not afford to pay the $1,000 in fines and fees related to unpaid traffic tickets. Rather than determine whether Gonzales could afford to pay and even though her violations posed little threat to public safety, the judge simply locked her up.

Gonzales is not alone. Jailing people only because they cannot pay fines and fees is unconstitutional, but according to a 2017 report by Texas Appleseed and the Texas Fair Defense Project, it is common practice in the Lone Star State. The prevalence of this practice likely reflects, in part, the reality that many Texas municipalities depend on fines and fees from traffic and other code violations for large shares of their budgets: One scholar found that of the 100 municipalities nationwide that derived the highest percentages of their revenues from fines and fees in 2012, 19 — a plurality — were in Texas.

Code enforcement is meant to protect the public, not pad municipal budgets. So when municipalities rely heavily on fines and fees from code violations, this is a sign they may be putting revenue generation ahead of public safety. This is “taxation by citation,” and, according to a new report by the Institute for Justice, or IJ, it may come at a cost.

“The Price of Taxation by Citation” details the findings of IJ’s case studies on some of the worst offenders in the nation — three metro Atlanta cities that generate double-digit shares of their revenues from fines and fees, often from violations that present little risk to the public. Our results suggest the three cities perceive a need for revenue and face few obstacles to using code enforcement to pursue it.

Our results also suggest that while taxation by citation has been lucrative for the three cities, they pay a price for putting revenue generation ahead of public safety: City residents with recent citations reported lower levels of trust in city government than residents without.

The same may well be true of other cities that rely heavily on fines and fees, and Texas has its share. Ten Texas municipalities with populations of 5,000 or more generated at least 10 percent of their revenues from fines and fees in 2017 and 2018. For example, San Antonio-area Bulverde and Leon Valley took in 14.5 percent and 13 percent of their revenues from fines and fees, respectively. Small cities outside Houston, Austin and Fort Worth also made the list, which we generated using data from a Governing magazine report."