HERMANN – Gasconade County this month received the third-largest fuel tax reimbursement check from the state in the several years that County Treasurer Mike Feagan has been tracking the revenue.

Feagan Thursday morning reported to the County Commission that the May reimbursement check from the Department of Revenue was for $86,324. That’s almost $13,000 more than the amount received last month and almost $9,000 more than the amount received in May of last year.

In the five-year period of payments reported by Feagan, the single largest monthly check arrived in October of last year for $86,702. The second-largest amount was $86,681 that was received in September of last year.

“It’s the best May we’ve every had and it’s the best month of the year,” Feagan said.

The county’s share of the state fuel tax — which includes revenue generated by the state’s tax on fuel sales and some other transportation-related monies — amounts to $396,074 through the first five months of this year. That’s $33,066 more than was received during the same period last year, the report shows.

In 2025, the fuel tax generated $937,801 for Gasconade County, which allocates the fuel tax money to the Road Department. Last year’s total amount was about $71,000 more than the total amount received in 2024.

Meanwhile, the county treasurer noted that he was able to obtain a three-month payback of slightly more than $46,000 collected on the sale of marijuana by what was the only marijuana dispensary in the county. CODES dispensary, which in the past year or so left Hermann for Jefferson City applied for a refund of the 3-percent sales tax it had paid to Gasconade County since it began operations following statewide voter approval of legalized marijuana sales several years ago.

The refund was made possible after a state court ruled that applying a county sales tax and a municipal sales tax to marijuana sales amounted to “stacking” and was illegal. A county sales tax could only be applied if the sales took place in unincorporated county.

“We’ve entered into a three-month agreement” with state government for the payback, Feagan told the Commission. The Department of Revenue will withhold slightly more than $15,000 from the county’s General Fund Sales Tax payments in June, July and August to account for the $46,000-plus collected from CODES. The withholding will allow the county to avoid pulling the significant amount from somewhere in the operating budget.

County Clerk Lesa Lietzow noted during last week’s Commission session that a separate line item to accommodate a possible refund was not included in the budget and that the money would have had to be taken from one of the many funds that has money in it.

Feagan said last week he didn’t know how difficult it might be to get the state agency to agree to a series of monthly withholding. As it turned out, he said, the process went smoothly. “It took less than 24 hours to get it done,” he said.

Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte, R-Hermann, pointed out that county officials were aware that a refund might be possible and decided not to include marijuana sales tax in the annual expenditures for county government services. Although the county did not make use of the sales tax money as part of the budget, the county was able to set it aside in an interest-bearing account while the refund issue was being resolved. The county gets to keep the interest generated by the account.