WC Treasurer seeks new position to help collect Delinquent Taxes

Staff position could save County money in contracted collections by private law firms

As County Administrator Doug Stanley listens, Warren County Treasurer Wanda Bryant explains her Budget proposal. She is seeking funding for an additional staff position to help collect Delinquent County Real Estate Taxes within one year, before they are turned over to a contracted law firm, which can collect a 20% share of collected taxes as a fee.

Between a rock and a hard place is where Warren County Treasurer Wanda Bryant appeared to be at a September Board of Supervisors Budget Work Session.  Bryant made her case for a Treasurer’s Office budget with funding for a new full-time position included.  She told the County Supervisors that the new staffer would help her department in collecting Delinquent Real Estate Taxes.

“Every year you say cut your budget – I try but it affects our ability to collect.  Consider what I’ve asked you – it will pay for itself many times over,” Bryant told the Warren Supervisors.

Bryant’s point may be well taken.  When Warren County Real Estate taxes go delinquent for over a year, the County has contracted the Pond Law Firm for years to pursue the collection.  State Code allows contracted law firms working on behalf of municipalities, to take a 20-percent share of the back taxes collected.  So, having County Staff move on more collections in that first year could save money by limiting the amount of collections made by the County’s contracted middle man.

Warren Treasurer Bryant’s budget situation illustrates the dilemma of Constitutional Officers across the Commonwealth.  They are elected officials ultimately responsible to voters for their jobs, based on performance.  However, they are reliant on the elected boards of their Municipalities to have adequate funding to staff their departments to perform their Constitutional function, in this case tax and revenue collection, as they perceive it needs to be accomplished.

Bryant’s one-word response to Supervisor Dan Murray’s query as to whether a part-time, contract employee would suffice to do the job was, “No.”

The Warren County Courthouse lawn was the site of a May 4, 2016, forced sale of Delin-quent Real Estate conducted by the Pond Law firm on behalf of Warren County.

During last year’s Fiscal Year Budget process, Delinquent Real Estate taxes became an issue for BOTH the Warren Supervisors and Front Royal Town Council.  The issue was raised on successive days, first by Councilman Bret Hrbek on the Town side; then by Fork District Supervisor Archie Fox, who is Bryant’s brother, on the County side.  At that time it was noted that the County had over $3-million in Delinquent Real Estate Taxes outstanding.

A check of surrounding localities by this reporter indicated that considering the relatively small amount of taxable land in Warren County compared to some of its neighbors, its delinquent total was proportionally high.  Part of the reason may be the County Administrator’s explanation that an earlier Board, perhaps over a decade ago and dating to the late Stuart Rudacille’s tenure, authorized some people investing in county land to carry Delinquent County Real Estate Taxes forward until they sold or turned a profit on their land.  The rationale for the decision, Stanley explained, was that the County was seeing a trend of realizing only pennies on the dollar from such forced sales.

In the wake of the 2015 budget process questions about Delinquent Tax Collection, at Bryant’s suggestion the County contracted a second firm, Taxing Authority Consulting Services (TACS), to assist the County in collecting taxes delinquent over a year.  The TACS contract went into effect at the beginning of FY 2017, on August 1, 2016.  According to the agenda summary of the TACS contract, both firms’ performance will be reviewed at the end of the current Fiscal Year.  Like the long-standing Pond firm contract, TACS’s is for one year, with options to renew for additional years.

On May 4, Daniel Pond III explained the Real Estate Auction process as interested buy-ers, then-Assistant County Attorney Dan Whitten (background, cool black hat and shades), among others, listen.

Daniel Pond III conducted a forced sale on delinquent properties for the County in May.  When a request for a record of all the firm’s forced sales on behalf of Warren County over the past five years was requested, Pond III said no such records were kept at the firm’s office.  He estimated that there may have only been one previous forced sale conducted by his predecessor in that task, Kimberley Athey, over those previous five years.  Athey left the Pond firm in 2014 to take a judicial appointment in Warren County Domestic & Juvenile Relations Court.

A February 2014 letter from Athey accompanying an accounting of a December 2013 auction noted that five of eight involved parcels required “funds from the county to cover the costs of sale (totaling $11,014.76),” adding, “Three of the sales resulted in bids sufficient to pay costs and delinquent taxes.  The total amount I will remit to the county for delinquent taxes is $19,571.28.”

Athey also attached a print out, “showing delinquent taxes collected in 2013 and 2012 as a result of the letters we send annually and the payment plans we’ve negotiated.”  That record indicated $243,658 in Delinquent Real Estate Taxes collected in 2012 and $318,846 in 2013; with corresponding Sanitary District back tax amounts of $23,432 and $37,387, also collected without forced sales.