Missouri residents will see a variety of changes to state laws including fewer car inspections as new legislation began being enforced on Wednesday.
In one of the biggest law changes, vehicles with fewer than 150,000 miles that are no more than 10 years old will be exempt from state vehicle safety inspections. The previous law required every-other-year inspections for vehicles over 5 years old. With the new law, an estimated 1.1 million additional vehicles will be able to travel Missouri roads without the state-mandated inspections.
Another change is an increase in what license offices can charge in processing fees. For handling an annual registration, the fee will increase to $6 from $3.50, while the fee for a biennial registration will go to $12 from $7.
The processing fee for a three-year driver’s license will climb to $6 from $2.50. For a driver’s license longer than three years, the fee will now be $12, up from $5.
Title transfers, instructional permits and other speciality license plates will now have processing fees of $6, up from $2.50.
The increases are the first in the last 20 years and the increases will help offset rising costs for licensing offices, which include wages and office supplies.
Other law changes of note are:
Prison sentences
Hundreds of Missouri prisoners serving mandatory sentences for largely nonviolent offenses will become eligible for parole. The new law exempts some nonviolent offenses from a state law requiring people to serve at least 40%, 50% or 80% of their prison terms, depending on their number of previous prison convictions. The law could make some prisoners immediately eligible for parole, probation or early release.
The legislation also addresses courts charging people who are arrested for the cost of holding them in jail. It prohibits payment of such jail debts from being made a condition of probation and bars people from being arrested and put back in jail for not paying previous jail costs.
The Missouri Supreme Court ruled in March that local courts can’t put people in jail for not paying previous jail debts.
Child care
There will be tighter restrictions on unlicensed in-home child care providers, who have been limited to caring for up to four children who aren’t related them and an unlimited number of children who are. The new law sets the limit at six children, total, and no more than three kids under the age of 2. The law exempts only school-age relatives.
Background checks
All Missouri school volunteers who might at any time be alone with students will have to undergo full criminal background checks.
— The Associated Press contributed to this report