Kentucky House Bill 774 would provide reliable information about fines and fees

A version of the following public comment was submitted to the Kentucky House Committee on Committees on March 3, 2026.

Our criminal justice policy research team works to ensure that the criminal justice system impartially enforces rights and protects public safety through the rule of law and due process. We believe the government's power to deprive individuals of liberty and property must be exercised with strict limits, proportionality, and transparency.

That's what House Bill 774 is about-transparency.

Kentucky policymakers currently lack basic data on how much is being assessed in fines, fees, and court costs, who bears those burdens, how much goes uncollected, and where the money goes. Most states do not adequately track legal financial obligations, and when information is available, it is often dispersed among local governments and courts, undermining informed policymaking and public trust in the justice system.

Failure to pay can result in incarceration and, if a person also fails to appear at a related hearing, suspension of their driver's license. Fines and fees are also an unreliable source of revenue and can create undesirable conflicts of interest. Without reliable data, policymakers cannot distinguish fees that serve a legitimate purpose from those that simply extract revenue from people least able to pay.

Kentuckians owed at least $91 million in unpaid court debt as of January 2019, but even that figure understates the problem. When researchers sought to better understand the full scope of outstanding fines and fees statewide, the Administrative Office of the Courts staff told them that confidence in the overall accuracy of the available data was low and that further investigation would be required.

Compounding this, Kentucky is one of only 17 states that impose no statute of limitations on the collection of criminal fines and fees debt, meaning these obligations can be pursued indefinitely. The result is a growing, largely invisible pool of debt with serious consequences for Kentuckians and no reliable data to guide reform.

HB 774 requires governmental entities to submit standardized annual data on assessed, collected, and waived legal financial obligations to the Kentucky Center for Statistics, broken down by specific obligation type. It requires that data be published in an interactive, searchable public format and mandates disclosure of where collected money goes. The auditor of public accounts would be authorized to conduct financial audits of fine and fee revenues at the request of the governor or any member of the General Assembly. The Legislative Oversight and Investigations Committee would also be required to prepare an annual summary of the published data for submission to the full General Assembly.

HB 774 does not eliminate any fine or fee. It simply seeks to ensure that policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders have access to reliable information about the imposition and collection of legal financial obligations. Transparency is a precondition for sound criminal justice policy, and HB 774 represents a meaningful step toward that goal.