YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill

June 10, 2003

Report No. 2003-50

During our audit of the Twenty-Second Judicial Circuit, City of St. Louis, Missouri, Municipal Divisions, we identified certain management practices which we believe could be improved.

The July 31, 2002 balance in the municipal divisions' bond account included cash bond receipts totaling more than $679,000 which have been held in excess of one year.  In addition, this balance includes several bonds from defendants whose cases were refused for prosecution by the City Counselor's Office.

An attempt should be made to determine the proper disposition of these monies.  A review should be made of any bonds posted by persons who failed to make the required court appearance to determine if the bonds should be forfeited and monies paid to the city treasury as provided by state law.  The court should also attempt to locate the surety's from the refused cases and refund the bond monies.  For any bonds which remain unclaimed, state law requires bonds unclaimed for one year after disposition of the case to be turned over to the state's Unclaimed Property Section.

As of February 20, 2003, the court had received $329,491 in overpayments that should be used to pay other tickets or refunded.  When overpayments are received, the court does not automatically make refunds to the payors unless requested by the payor.  Instead, overpayments are turned over to the city along with regular payments of fines and costs.

The overpayment listing includes the name and address of the registered owner of the vehicle, but the court has not attempted to disburse these refunds to the payors or to transfer the overpayment to other unpaid parking ticket on the same license plate.  In addition, they have not sent any of the unrefunded overpayments to the state's Unclaimed Property Section.

Similar conditions were noted in our prior report.

The lack of communication between the municipal divisions and the police department has also resulted in some offenses not being prosecuted.  Due to data storage limits, the municipal divisions have to purge old ticket sequences.  When a ticket is issued from a sequence that has been purged from the system, the computer does not recognize the ticket number as valid.  This results in the ticket being voided and the offense not being prosecuted.  To correct this problem, the police department needs to be informed of the sequences that have been purged so any remaining tickets in these sequences can be recalled.

Additional concerns regarding bond and ticket accountability were noted.

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