Justice Department guidance meant to reform the city’s reliance on municipal courts. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded U.S. The new budget comes several months after U.S. But over the same timeframe, the city has significantly raised sales taxes to account for the decreased income, a strategy which fails over time and also disproportionately affects the poor.Īnd in the fiscal year 2019 budget, the city plans to increase expected fine revenue for the first time since the city began the downward trend, with $380,000 projected. The fines which accounted for over 16% of the budget in 2014 were slowly decreased, from generating $2,571,000 in 2013 to just $292,000 in 2018. The findings in the report also pushed Missouri’s Supreme Court to take control of Ferguson’s Municipal Court later that year. Since 2015, when the Department of Justice wrote an explosive report accusing the Ferguson Police Department of disproportionately targeting black residents and focusing on “maximizing revenue” rather than administering justice, the city has gradually decreased its use of fines as revenue. I also learned that Ferguson is still relying on so-called “fines and forfeitures” for a significant amount of its revenue, four years after the shooting of Michael Brown drew national attention to the city and to that issue in particular.

When researching the city’s budget, I found that this problem was symptomatic of the city's distorted fiscal priorities. While a significant amount of spending was allocated for debt service and for chasing growth via TIF (Tax Increment Financing), only minimal money was reserved for upkeep and providing sidewalks despite the 24% of people in Ferguson living in poverty.īut that wasn’t the only story the budget told. Last February, I wrote a story about how the lack of sidewalks in Ferguson, Missouri affects the people who live there.

Ferguson missouri a ghost town.