Collection agency pulls in $250,000

Quarter of a Million Dollars Recovered for County

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Louis A. Bianchi, McHenry County State’s Attorney, is pleased to announce that with the assistance of the McHenry County Circuit Clerk, Kathy Keefe, over $250,000 in outstanding fines and court costs owed the County of McHenry from traffic and criminal offenders has been recovered in under two years.

In January, 2009 a contract was entered into with Alliance One Receivables Management, Inc., an outside collections agency to recover outstanding fines and court costs due the County of McHenry on cases that have been closed by the courts. This collection comes at no cost to the taxpayers as all costs are passed on to the delinquent offenders. This quarter of a million dollars is money that would have remained largely unpaid without these efforts which help ease financial pressures for McHenry County and its taxpayers in the current economy.

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Comment:

Did Alliance One recover 100% of the $250,000 AND collect its expenses on top of that? That seems to be what the press release says.

Typical collection agency contracts allow collectors to negotiate and settle for less than 100%, and then to take their collection costs out of what is collected.

If McHenry County got 100% of the $250,000, then I say, "Job well done."

Now, how much more is owed?