South Carolina court fine-and-fee revenue has dropped
COLUMBIA – South Carolina’s courts are collecting fewer fines, but officials are not sure why.
The amount of fines collected during the fiscal year ending in June was $8.4 million, down from $8.6 million for the previous year and $8.5 million for the year before that, the state Board of Economic Advisors reported last week.
South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal told The Greenville News she doesn’t know what might be behind the numbers without seeing a breakdown in the type of fine- and fee-revenue.
“Keep in mind the fines and fees are a mass of all kinds of things,” she said. “The bulk of it is tickets. Basically tickets issued by the Highway Patrol or by municipalities, or in some cases by sheriff’s offices.”
Her guess is that ticket revenue may be down because it is related to “how strongly they fund the Highway Patrol,” she said.
The number of troopers statewide has gone from 807 four years ago to 794 today, said Sherri Iacobelli, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety.
Troopers have issued 297,155 traffic tickets since January, down from 313,382 for the same time period last year, she said.
Meanwhile, accident investigations over the same time period have gone up from 51,148 for January-through-August of last year to 56,453 for the same time period this year, Iacobelli said.
“When troopers are spending more time on collision investigations, that impacts proactive enforcement,” she said.
Another possible cause of the decrease in fines and fees is a drop in civil filings, Toal said.
Although case information is not yet posted for this year, information for the previous two years on the court system’s website shows a decrease in cases.
For the fiscal year 2012-13, the court system disposed of 119,404 criminal cases. Last year, that number dropped to 115,829 cases.
Civil cases pending dropped during the same time period, going from 65,773 cases to 59,674 cases.
“It’s probably related to the economy as much as anything else,” Toal said, explaining some may not be able to afford a lawsuit.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Larry Martin of Pickens said he was not aware of the drop in fines or cases.
“That’s news to me,” he said. “You’ve got to assume if there are less cases that there would be less in fines. That also could mean fewer crimes or fewer apprehensions.”
And fewer lawsuits. But he said fewer lawsuits is not necessarily a problem, if people are stopping to think about litigation because of the costs involved.
“That’s not altogether a bad thing,” he said. “If a filing fee is giving someone pause to actually filing a case, well maybe they don’t have a good case. That’s one way to look at it.”
The court system’s current $70 million budget includes $47 million in General Fund appropriations, as well as federal grants and revenue from various fines and fees.