PAGEDALE, Mo. — This spring, officials in this tiny city near St. Louis ordered Valarie Whitner to replace her siding; repaint her gutters, downspout and foundation; and put up screens or storm covers outside every window and blinds or curtains on the inside.
And that was before the list of demands moved on to her roof, fence and yard.
Ms. Whitner, 57, who works nights at a hospital, said she and her longtime partner felt swamped beneath the costs of paying for the city-mandated repairs and for fees, fines and court costs, which her lawyers say included at least $2,400 in violations. She took out a high-interest payday loan, which she still owes hundreds of dollars on and calls her “Pagedale money.”
“It was horrible,” Ms. Whitner said the other day from her living room, which she has decorated with do-it-yourself vases and paintings. “Pagedale just kept coming back to us, bothering us. At some point, this is all just a way for the city
In the aftermath of the fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, residents in this region described a pattern of mounting traffic fines, fees and arrests in the 90 municipalities that make up St. Louis County. Many such abuses were described in a scathing Justice Department report about Ferguson.
But the problems facing Ms. Whitner in Pagedale represent another issue: what many residents consider the abusive levying of fines or fees for minor nontraffic ordinances, often involving unsightly lawns or houses.
On Wednesday, lawyers from the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest firm based in Arlington, Va., filed a civil rights complaint against Pagedale, which like Ferguson is in north St. Louis County. The complaint, filed in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, accuses the city of violating due process and excess-fines protections in the Constitution by turning its code enforcement and municipal court into “revenue-generating machines” to go after residents.
The complaint, which seeks class-action status, calls for an injunction against the city’s reliance on such fines.
“We hope that if the court agrees with us, the residents of Pagedale will no longer be treated as walking cash machines by their city government and that the city will limit its regulatory authority to things that actually affect health or safety,” said William R. Maurer, the managing attorney of the Institute for Justice’s office in Washington State. The three named plaintiffs in the lawsuit include Ms. Whitner and her partner, Vincent Blount.
Sam Alton, the city attorney for Pagedale, said the city strongly disagreed with any assertion that it had pursued housing violations to make money. The portion of revenue the city derives from such tickets is small, Mr. Alton said, adding: “It’s got nothing to do with driving up revenue. And it’s got everything to do with making the properties code compliant and safe.”
After the Justice Department’s report, which asserted that Ferguson was using law enforcement to generate revenue for its budget, Missouri lawmakers enacted legislation that lowered a cap on how much of a city’s revenues may come from traffic fines; in St. Louis County, cities were limited to 12.5 percent of their revenues.
But that law addresses only traffic violations, and some here worry that St. Louis County municipalities are turning to nontraffic fees and fines to make up the lost revenue. In the case of Pagedale, Mr. Maurer said he believed the city had begun doing that years ago when an earlier limit on traffic revenues was imposed. In the mid-1990s, the traffic-fine cap had been 45 percent until legislation began gradually reducing it.
“I think it’s appropriate for policy makers to be mindful that there may be another wave of profiteering that manifests itself in a different form, and continues to create a cycle of poverty,” Eric Schmitt, a Republican state senator who had pressed for the tougher limits on traffic fines, said in an interview. “If we see that, all options are on the table.”
The practice of many St. Louis County municipalities of using traffic and nontraffic fines and fees to finance their budgets has also led to calls for some of those towns to consolidate operations as a means of reducing government costs. A commission assigned by Gov. Jay Nixon to study the underlying causes of the Ferguson unrest issued a long list of recommendations that included consolidating some of the 60 police departments and 81 municipal courts that serve the county.
Residents here say leaders in Pagedale, a predominantly black city of trim homes and about 3,300 people a few miles south of Ferguson, pride themselves on the city’s appearance and on a recent burst of new development, which includes a grocery store and a movie theater that was set to open this week. Some spoke with pride of the city’s Police Department and carefully kept sidewalks.
Yet in recent years, some here say, warning notices have begun appearing on house after house. In 2013, the city generated 17 percent of its $2 million in revenue from all fines and fees, documents show, though Mr. Alton said the portion was lower now. According to an article in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch that first described the rise in nontraffic cases in the region’s municipalities, Pagedale officials issued 495 percent more tickets and citations unrelated to traffic in the years since 2010. City officials dispute that claim, saying the increase was smaller.
To hear residents here tell it, the violations can seem endless: having a wading pool in front of the front line of the house; having a dish antenna on the front of the house; wearing pants below the waist in public; having a hedge above three feet in the front yard.
Mildred Bryant, who has lived here for nearly 47 years, got a warning letter in May. Her house is old, she says, but not unsafe. Still, she was given no more than 30 days to fix a dozen violations, the letter said, or face a court summons.
“I’ve never really gotten in trouble before,” said Ms. Bryant, 84, the third plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit. “I wasn’t sure what to think. What is this all about all of the sudden? Is it about wanting more money?”
Ms. Bryant said she found several of the violations baffling, not to mention beyond her limited retirement income. “All windows need screens and window treatment such as blinds and or matching curtains, slats, etc.,” the letter said. She also was ordered to repaint her porch and building foundation, “touch up paint or repaint entire house,” cut back weeds and “treat fence line with brush killer.”
In the months since, Ms. Bryant said, her sons have helped her try to meet the requirements.
Mr. Alton said that the city was working with Ms. Bryant to help her get her home up to code, as it is with other residents. She has not been fined, only warned. The point, Mr. Alton said, is to make sure properties are safe and code compliant, not to collect money.
“You have a city that’s trying to live within the law and to make the city nice for its residents and make its properties safe,” he said.
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By MONICA DAVEY
NOV. 4, 2015