Hard-up defendants pay as state siphons court fees for unrelated uses
In 1997, the Legislature passed a law to help police find missing parolees. The Fugitive Apprehension Fund was paid for by assessing a fee on anyone convicted of a crime.
The fund eventually fell into disuse; by 2011 no one had drawn a penny from the account for four years. But the state kept collecting the money anyway, and the pot continued to grow.
Last April, the comptroller declared that "the purpose for which the funds were collected is moot" and the money raised by charging convicts — by then $135 million — was quietly swept into the state's general bank account.
Even then, lawmakers still didn't kill the fugitive apprehension fee. They simply renamed it, passing a new law dictating that the money once raised to catch fugitives will now pay for a statewide emergency radio system.
http://www.statesman.com/news/statesman-investigates/hard-up-defendants-pay-as-state-siphons-court-2215142.html
