State program aids debt collection

By David Skolnick | January 25, 2012 at 12:06a.m.

DeWine

YOUNGSTOWN

A new program to help local governments throughout the state collect debt will be based in downtown Youngstown, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said.

The Local Government Collections Services Program will allow local government entities throughout the state to request the attorney general’s office collect debt of at least $100 they are owed. Most of the debt would be court fines and costs.

“Any local jurisdiction such as a town, village, city, any local unit of government can participate,” DeWine said Tuesday.

The program will start shortly with five new employees at the attorney general’s office in the city-owned 20 Federal Place, a downtown office building.

If the program grows, DeWine said he’s committed to expanding it at the Youngstown office.

“We could have put it anywhere, but I chose Youngstown,” he said. “This is a great facility with great people.”

Twenty Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation employees and 14 collections enforcement workers work at the downtown office.

This program is similar to the Ohio Attorney General’s Collection Enforcement Section, which serves as the chief collection agent for all state agencies, boards, commissions and universities.

That section is based in Columbus with about 150 employees. It collected $457 million during the state’s last fiscal year, July 2010 to June 2011, said Eve Mueller, an attorney general spokeswoman.

As part of the state’s budget bill, a provision allowing the attorney general to collect debt on behalf of local governments, if those entities are interested in participating, became law last summer.

The new program “will help counties, cities, townships, and villages recover money they are owed and free up resources that otherwise would have been devoted to collections,” DeWine said.

The program is funded by a collection cost of about 10 percent from the debtor, DeWine said. The program will not cost the state, taxpayers or local government any money, he said.

Also, DeWine said the Fugitive Safe Surrender program will start shortly in the Mahoning Valley. DeWine announced last May that the program would begin here in 2012 during a safety summit at St. Dominic Church.

The program offers individuals with outstanding warrants the ability to turn themselves in to law enforcement and have their case adjudicated, typically at a church, he said.