Arkansas lawmakers support eliminating $10 monthly installment fee for court fines

A panel of Arkansas lawmakers agreed Monday to recommend legislation next year that would eliminate the $10 monthly fee that comes with paying off court-ordered fines and fees, such as traffic tickets, on an installment plan.

The fee results in lower-income people paying a higher cumulative amount than people who can afford to pay up front, and members of both parties said this is unfair at Monday’s Joint Judiciary Committee meeting.

“In a perfect world in which we had all the money in the world, we wouldn’t be funding the court system off the backs of people who often cannot afford to pay,” said Rep. Carol Dalby, R-Texarkana, the House Judiciary Committee chair.

One-fourth of the fee revenue supports local district courts’ automated record-keeping system, one-fourth supports the same thing at the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts and the remaining half goes into the state’s Administration of Justice (AOJ) fund, Dalby said.

The AOJ fund is administered by the Department of Finance and Administration and supports about 25 entities, not all of which are related to the judiciary.

Lawmakers did not put forth suggestions for how to fill the funding gap that eliminating the fee would create. The joint committee will meet again Sept. 23 to finalize a report with several recommended changes to the way the state’s judicial system is funded, Dalby said.

Act 38 of 2023, which Dalby sponsored, authorized “a legislative study of financial matters related to the court system” and requires the joint committee to send the report of its findings and draft legislation to the governor, legislative leaders and the Arkansas Supreme Court by Oct. 1.

“There may not be the votes or the heart to go forward with [eliminating the fee] in legislation, but at least there’s the recommendation,” Dalby said. “…We also, being good stewards of tax money, would have to figure out alternate funding because this does fund a lot of necessary expenditures in the district court system.”

House Minority Leader Andrew Collins, D-Little Rock, called the fee “an uneven administration of justice” that the Legislature has a responsibility to fix for low-income people.

Failure to pay fines and fees can result in an Arkansan’s driver’s license being suspended. Additionally, people in financial distress might not have a permanent home and might not receive mail from the state that informs them of overdue or unpaid fines and fees, said Rep. Steve Unger, R-Springdale.

“We don’t want to look like we’re subsidizing bad behavior, but the truth is we’re ending up supporting a broken court system that is so backed up,” he said.

Cities and counties currently pay about $4 million of district judges’ salaries since the state cannot support them entirely, Dalby and Arkansas Association of Counties chief legal counsel Mark Whitmore said. District judges are also handling more than 100,000 “uncertain warrants” that have accumulated over several years, Whitmore said.

The committee also agreed to support two measures Dalby recommended for the report: requiring cities and counties to retain 50% of district court revenue and send the other half to the state, and finding alternative funding sources for entities currently supported by the AOJ fund.