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Officials: commercial‑vehicle ticket programming gave counties shares they shouldn’t have; juvenile detention fund was underpaid
Summary
State Court Administration officials said programming treated commercial‑vehicle citations like regular criminal fines (giving counties roughly 9% between FY21–FY24 when law requires road‑use tax routing), and that a separate coding error underallocated money to the juvenile detention home fund; corrected programming is in place for FY25 but prior years require legislative action.
State Court Administration staff told county stakeholders that two distinct programming errors in the JET case‑management system affected local receipts between fiscal years 2021 and 2024: (1) commercial‑vehicle enforcement citations were distributed like regular criminal fines instead of being routed 100% to the road‑use tax fund, and (2) a criminal‑penalty search charge had been underallocated to the juvenile detention home fund until a December 2022 programming fix.
Amber Shanahan Pricky, senior staff attorney, said the commercial‑vehicle issue caused counties to receive about a 9% share on those tickets that, by statute, should have gone to the road‑use tax fund. "Between FY21 and FY24 counties were getting 9% of these tickets that they should not have been," she said, adding the programming has been corrected but the administration cannot unilaterally take back funds already distributed.
On the juvenile detention home fund, Shanahan Pricky said the branch identified an underallocation of roughly $2.2 million in FY21 and about $1.9 million in FY22 (figures presented during the webinar). A December 2022 programming change corrected distributions to the juvenile detention home fund but inadvertently removed a related collection fee; present corrections restore the juvenile‑fund distributions while ensuring applicable collection fees are applied, which will shift some amounts among recipients.
County‑attorney collection fees: presenters also explained changes to the county‑attorney collection framework. Under the rebuilt framework, a county‑attorney collecting county receives a collection fee for cases in collections unless the statute explicitly exempts the charge. Amber described how collection‑fee splits operate: before a county meets its annual threshold the county receives a 28% collection fee and 72% goes to the court‑debt recipient; after the threshold a county still receives 28%, the county attorney receives a 5% bonus, and 67% goes to the court‑debt recipient. Presenters said that earlier programming did not always provide the county or county‑attorney fee when required.
Local effects and equity: Kent Farber and Bob Gas emphasized that some corrected county increases simply shift money among local entities (for example, from a sheriff’s office to a county general fund or a county attorney), while other corrections restore amounts that should have been paid to state or juvenile funds. Sheriffs’ offices and sheriff associations have been pressing for clearer reporting on the 9% share for criminal fines (presenters flagged fin codes M44 and CM78 as key codes to review).
What counties should expect: the administration will publish a searchable spreadsheet that lets each county see itemized impacts for FY21–FY24. Presenters cautioned that, because these are prior‑year distributions, any reclamation or redistribution would require legislation or other statutory authority. In the meantime, corrected programming applies to FY25 onward.
Closing note: presenters asked counties to review the spreadsheet when released and to prepare questions for stakeholder meetings with the administration and the legislature.
