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When St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann talks about Missouri’s Deputy Sheriff Salary Supplemental Fund, he uses a pejorative to describe the scheme.

Ehlmann, a Republican, says the fund is an example of “rural socialism.”

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When St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann talks about Missouri’s Deputy Sheriff Salary Supplemental Fund, he uses a pejorative to describe the scheme.

Ehlmann, a Republican, says the fund is an example of “rural socialism.”

The phrase adds important context to two public safety decisions made in the past week by Gov. Mike Parson. In one case, he signed a bill to add money to the deputy fund; in another, he vetoed money earmarked for a new 911 center in St. Louis.

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The fund was created by the Missouri Legislature in 2008 to raise the pay of deputy sheriffs in the state’s rural areas, where there is a low tax base and the pay is paltry. That’s not a bad idea, but the people paying for it live in St. Charles County, St. Louis County, Jackson County and the rest of the state’s larger population centers.

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The fund gets its money from a $10 court fee attached to civil cases when papers are served. Ehlmann keeps a spreadsheet of where the money comes from (the cities) and where it goes (tiny counties far away).

St. Louis County is the biggest donor, providing more than $10 million of the $40 million raised since the fund’s inception. Almost none of that money (only $17,000) has come back to the county.


Tiny Dade County in southwest Missouri is the biggest beneficiary of the program, receiving a 7,200% return on what it has put into the fund. Rural socialism, indeed.

Mike Yoakum, a process server I know from Boone County, calls the fund a “tax on small businesses and poor people.” This year, the Legislature added a new $10 fee to the scheme, this one to be charged by private companies that provide court services. Parson, a former rural sheriff, signed the bill into law this past week.

That action came just a few days after Parson vetoed a line item in the budget with significant implications in St. Louis. Lawmakers had included $23 million for a new unified 911 facility in St. Louis, perhaps as important a public safety priority as exists in the state.


As last week’s damaging storms proved yet again, the center is urgently needed. Two people died in the storms — 33-year-old Katherine Coen in St. Louis and 5-year-old R.J. Thomas in Jennings — at least partly because first responders were slow to arrive as Good Samaritans were on hold for 30 minutes or longer trying to get help. The 911 system throughout the St. Louis region, but particularly in the city, has been broken for a very long time. It’s the fault of three successive mayors, the Board of Aldermen, bickering police and fire unions and the fractured governance in the region. It is, also, the fault of the governor.

In vetoing items in this year’s budget, Parson said some priorities are best left up to local folks. Like deputy sheriff salaries, perhaps?


The sad reality is the Missouri Legislature has long practiced a form of rural socialism by ignoring priorities in St. Louis and Kansas City, the state’s two economic engines, while using money generated in those cities to prop up rural needs. One of the best examples is in transportation funding. In 1952, after three proposals for gas tax increases to pay for state roads had failed, Missouri leaders made a deal with the devil. They told rural voters the state would take over 12,000 miles of county roads, and provide funding to pave those roads, if the voters approved a gas tax increase.

The tax passed, and Missouri’s cities have paid the price ever since. None of that state transportation money, for instance, goes to transit, unlike in most states. Missouri has more road miles per capita than all but three other states. City taxpayers are subsidizing little-used rural roads and the deputy sheriffs patrolling those roads.