Mike Moon and Controversy over Sheriffs' Salaries in Missouri

A deputy recently made a comment in an online forum that Mike moon is an enemy of Missouri sheriff's because he introduced a bill to cut sheriff's salaries. I am not going to name the deputy; calling him out is not the point of this post, nor is it merely to defend Mike Moon. Rather, my purpose is to provide information about a complex and tangled issue that we do need to discuss and solve. Many people may not even know how the salary of county sheriffs is determined in Missouri or why this conflict exists. I do not, myself, know what the solution ought to be, though I would venture a guess that what we are doing is not the best approach. I provide links to sources so that people can read further and decide for themselves.

The short summary is this: a major change to the way pay is calculated was pushed through in an unconstitutional multi-subject bill, provoking a lawsuit by various counties. Mike Moon introduced a targeted bill to reverse the change. This bill died in committee and went nowhere. The underlying issue is real: questions about how to ensure adequate pay for MO sheriffs and deputies are important and ought be debated.

(In the interests of disclosure, I have been a volunteer for Mike Moon for many years and I have also been a volunteer of my local Sheriff's Office. I get paid the same in both roles: Zero. The opinions here are my own: they are not opinions of any candidate or organization.)

How is Sheriff Pay Calculated?

As of the time of this writing, the pay of a county sheriff is set through Revised Statutes of Missouri (RsMO) 57.317. I am making an effort in this article to link to particular versions of the statutes, so, hopefully, these will remain stable as this page sits on the Internet and the statutes are revised over time. Each page of the Revised Statutes has a table at the bottom which allows you to see when it was last changed and switch between historical versions. For the version effective 28 August 2022, we see the following:

Except in a noncharter county of the first classification with more than one hundred fifty thousand and less than two hundred thousand inhabitants, the county sheriff in any county of the first or second classification shall receive an annual salary equal to eighty percent of the compensation of an associate circuit judge of the county. [emphasis mine]

 The law goes on to present a table setting different percentages for counties of the third or forth classification. Lawrence County, Missouri, for instance, is a third class county with a valuation of roughly $620 million in 2024 (PDF). Consulting the table yields a salary of 60% for Lawrence County. In Missouri, since 2010, Associate Circuit Judge salaries are tied to their federal counterparts. If I am reading this correctly, FY2023 salaries for Missouri Associate Circuit Court Judges were set at $150,035 (Missouri Judiciary FY 2023 Budget Request (PDF) pp 21). Again, using Lawrence County as an example, that would yield $90,021 ($150,035 x 0.6).

So, Who Really Controls the Sheriffs' Salaries?

This means that, effectively, the salary of a Missouri County Sheriff is tied to that of a federal official. The local county have no control over the federal budget and, the federal government being somewhat erratic in its behavior, no reason to trust that this amount will be stable in the future. This was a core point of contention when SB53 was passed to set this compensation:

     According to Skiles, it is pretty well agreed among county commissioners across Missouri that one particular part of the bill is disagreeable because it eliminates county control over a budget item that each county will have to pay.

    “And not a red cent from the state,. Local taxpayers will be left to pay for it,” he said.

    That budget item is sheriff salary, tying it to federal judge’s salaries, which in Dent County will increase the sheriff’s salary by more than $19,000. (The Salem News Online -"COUNTY COMMISSION: Veto of bill tying sheriff salaries to federal judge salaries urged")

 There were many other problems with SB 53, which was combined with SB 60 into a complicated and likely unconstitutional mess (violating at least the Single Subject Rule in the Missouri Constitution). There is at least one lawsuit over the change.

How Was Sheriff Pay Calculated Before?

Prior to this change, the version of RsMO 57.317 effective 28 August 1997 said:

"The county sheriff in any county, other than in a first classification chartered county, shall receive an annual salary computed as set forth in the following schedule.  The assessed valuation factor shall be the amount thereof as shown for the year next preceding the computation.  The provisions of this section shall not permit or require a reduction in the amount of compensation being paid for the office of sheriff on January 1, 1997."

This is comparable to how the pay of other county officials are calculated. Looking up Lawrence County's Assessed Valuation in the table yields $54,000, which is, clearly, much lower than $90,000. An additional $2,000 came from the state if the local Sheriff attended state-required training.

The salaries set by this system make it difficult to attract and retain qualified sheriffs if the base drifted too low. However, the upsides of the system were that it was a) predictable for the county budget and b) tied to the tax valuation of the county which ensured that the county ought be able to pay for it as its valuation forced a pay increase. Although forcing an increase in sheriff pay may be seen as a good, it can have perverse effects:

Clearly, it is not only the number of deputies that County Commissions might consider trimming: other emergency services, road repair, etc., all has to balance somewhere within the limited county budget. In many counties, including our own, our ability to pay and retain deputies was already very poor.

Mike Moon and SB1036

This is where Mike Moon enters the picture. Compliance with the Missouri Constitution, including the Single Subject Rule has been among his primary issues in his legislative career. He has also pushed for the state (or local government) to have control over its own affairs rather than automatically tying Missouri law to federal law we do not control. He introduced SB1036 to undo the tying of the sheriff's salary to that of a federal official. It restored the original table and added the ability of a salary commission to increase the local salary schedule by up to $6,000. This change did not decrease the pay of sheriff except with a 2/3 vote of the salary commission.

SB1036 was killed in committee and never progressed. As far as I can find, that was the sum total of his involvement.

What Is the Correct Solution?

Once again, we have a complicated issue with no clear perfect fix. We end up with some basic points that need to be balanced somehow:

• There are serious concerns with being able to pay and retain good sheriffs in Missouri counties
• Many counties have great difficulty balancing their budget across the board
•  Tying budget items to actions of the distant federal budget can make the job impossible. Increases, as much as possible, need to be predictable and not disconnected from revenue
• Putting pay completely under the control of the local county commission can allow them to stifle or starve a sheriff's office
• shoving through significant changes in large, multi-subject bills makes them hard to vet, lawsuit prone, and hard to later fix; this is why the MO Constitution flatly forbids the practice
  

On the balance, I believe that the solution of SB53 was wrong and potentially dangerous. I am not certain that simply resetting the pay schedule to the status quo ante is the correct choice either, but it was at least a reasonable and rational option to undo SB53. Either way, we need a better solution going forward.