ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Speed traps around St. Louis County would lose some of their bite, under a court case filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
Schmitt has filed suit in Cole County, asking the court to reinstate a 12.5% cap on the amount of annual revenue St. Louis County area towns can get from traffic tickets.
That was the limit originally set by Schmitt's 2015 Senate Bill 5. But court challenges have allowed St. Louis County towns to raise their take from traffic tickets to the statewide cap of 20%.
"Some of these cities for years have been treating people as nothing more than ATMs," Schmitt said, "and the whole point of those reforms was to stop the practice. It's predatory, it's wrong and it's these bureaucrats trying to fund their bloated budgets."
Schmitt says he'll argue that its ok for St. Louis County to have a lower thresh hold than the rest of the state because the region has a history of gouging motorists.
As an example he points to St. Ann, where he says the police were issuing a thousand tickets a year until the city lost of major source of tax revenue, NorthWest Plaza. After the shopping mall closed, Schmitt says St. Ann started writing ten-thousand traffic tickets a year, most of them on busy Interstate 70.
Schmitt says it could take several months for the case to work it's way to a conclusion.
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