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I am glad you got deferred adjudication. The way this works is that you are temporarily found guilty and put on probation. The "fine" is supposed to be a probation fee now. Yes, they really do charge people in all crimes for probation. usually, for supervised probation, it is around $25/week. For unsupervised probation like yours, it is a flat rate. It is just coincidence that the fee happens to be about equal to the fine.

When you successfully complete the probation, the judges orders a new finding of not guilty on the criminal charge. This means it does not get reported to anyone, and you are not convicted. No drivers license record, no points towards surcharges, no insurance rate increase, and most important, no problems with your CHL.

Cities generally like this for people who will not get more tickets. It serves as a wake up call for the drivers who need it and doesn't punish them more than is needed to wake them up. I am usually happy with that result.

On most tickets written today, there is about $107 in court costs added. This all goes to the state for various specialized funds, like the crime victims fund. Most cities have tried to keep the overall fine down and usually only fine people about $35-50 plus the court costs.

And in addition, there is a limit on how much of the cities budget can come from ticket revenue at all. When they exceed the limit, all funds go to the state. 542.402 says that a city under 5000 people can only have 30% of its budget from tickets. I think there is another limit elsewhere for larger cities, but I could not find it in a quick search.

I did find the interesting note that traffic fine money can not be used as part of the general budget. It must be used for city or county roads and bridges or to enforce traffic laws (same section had that).

Before you plead guilty, you might want to check on another option. Deferred adjudication is always a possibility. Defensive driving is a specialized version of this, but there is a general deferred adjudication also.

The good news is that there may be another trick you can use. I am the one saying it is a class B misdemeanor, not the state. The Penal Code says the limit for a class C misdemeanor is a fine of $500. But the Penal Code also says that any misdemeanor not specifically classified is a class C. The Transportation Code does not specify the grade of offense and just says violations of the code are misdemeanors unless otherwise specified.

It is entirely possible that DPS would consider it a class C misdemeanor still, since it really is just a minor traffic offense. This could certainly be argued either way in a court. An even stronger argument would be that it went to a municipal court. Municipal court jurisdiction is class C misdemeanors only. I was going to say you could let it get to trial and then move for dismissal on the grounds of jurisdiction of the court, but I found where the Code of Criminal Procedure was modified to allow the municipal court to handle any offense under state law that is punishable by fine only.

If I were you and could not find a way around the guilty plea, I would not tell DPS about it as a misdemeanor, just treating it as a ticket like any other. My opinion has no legal weight on the status of the offense.

Just to correct the news, which we all know is very accurate, it is a state jail felony if it is the second offense of passing a school bus and causing serious bodily injury.

In other words, it is a class B misdemeanor for all normal tickets (fine up to $1000 makes it class B even though there is no jail time possible), a full class A misdemeanor for the first offense where you injure someone, and a state jail felony for the second or later offenses of injuring someone while passing the school bus.