A unanimous three-judge panel of the N.C. Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court’s ruling that public schools are entitled to the funds the state had been using to pay county jails for housing certain misdemeanor offenders.
The case started in Richmond County, where the local school board challenged the state’s use of a $50 surcharge for people convicted of an “improper equipment” offense under the motor vehicle laws. The state had intended that surcharge to be used for a State Confinement Fund. But the school system argued that the surcharge amounted to “clear proceeds” from fines, penalties, and forfeitures tied to violations of state law. The state Constitution guarantees that those proceeds “shall belong to” counties and will be “used exclusively for maintaining” public schools.
A trial judge agreed with the school board, and the appellate judges have affirmed that ruling.
