Most, if not all, incorporated communities in the United States have
municipal and traffic codes that delineate the powers and duties of local
governments or provide rules and regulations for public activity in the
community. The primary stated purpose of code enforcement is promoting
and protecting public health and safety. Codes are commonly enforced
through monetary fines and administrative fees. Recent years have seen
growing concern about cities engaging in “taxation by citation”—that is, the
use of code enforcement to raise revenue from fines and fees in excess of
citations issued solely to protect and advance public safety. A significant
focus of the concern is how taxation by citation violates rights in the pursuit
of revenue. In this way, taxation by citation seems to illustrate Professor
Bernadette Atuahene’s theory of stategraft: state agents transferring property
from residents “to the state in violation of the state’s own laws or basic human
rights,” often during times of budgetary austerity. But this Essay identifies
important features of municipal codes and their enforcement that are not
necessarily encompassed by this theory. It suggests how stategraft may be
expanded to encompass laws, regulations, and systems that legally—if
arguably unconstitutionally—allow or incentivize state actors to exploit their
residents for the benefit of the bureaucrat’s budget.
