Valencia County Treasurer Dorothy Lovato is asking county commissioners to allow her to hire at least two temporary employees to help her collect delinquent property taxes before the end of the fiscal year in July — or risk losing money to the state that would otherwise come to the county.

The county can collect delinquent taxes between 2007 and 2009. Once taxes become delinquent for four years, however, collecting them automatically becomes the responsibility of the state. In July, collection of 2007′s delinquent taxes will become the state’s responsibility.

“Should the county collect those delinquent taxes, the interest and the penalty would come to the county if collected within three years,” said County Manager Eric Zamora. “If we turn those taxes over to the state, the state collects the interest and penalties.”

Commissioner Don Holliday called the amount of delinquent property taxes “startling,” which totals more than $6 million over about 10 years.

According to the county officials, Valencia County accounts for almost 50 percent of the total amount of delinquencies in the state. Lovato said that’s because the county sends out around 209,000 tax bills, while most counties don’t have nearly that many property owners.

Lovato wants at least two temporary employees who will focus on collecting delinquent property taxes from 2007, an amount that totals $648,000.

“If we can collects even just half of the $648,000, the county gets to keep everything — taxes, interest, penalty,” she said, adding, “I really don’t want to send Santa Fe all this money.”

The hired help would track down the delinquent property owners for eight hours a day between now and when the county turns over 2007′s delinquencies to the state. The biggest problem with collecting the taxes, according to Lovato, is having the wrong address for a property owner.

The treasurer’s department has several employees who can also devote time to delinquent collection while completing their other duties. Lovato said one employee, for example, focused on delinquent taxes in September with great results.

“She called people. Wrote letters to them. Within two weeks she brought in $98,000 in delinquent taxes,” she said. “So just imagine what four to five people could bring in.”

Lovato said that’s proof the new employees would pay for themselves through their collections. Zamora agreed.

“This would pay for itself and then some,” he said.

Zamora said the county could set this up as a program, bringing in temporary hires each year to collect delinquent taxes before the July deadline.

Because hiring of the temporary employees was only a discussion item on the agenda, no action was taken by the commission, but in general all of the commissioners supported the idea.

Commissioner Ron Gentry said the county should continue to look for a fix to the core problem with delinquent taxes — that the treasurer, assessor and clerk don’t have a software program to properly share data between those offices.

“We’ve talked about this for five or six years. The problem, as I see it, is the coordination between the clerk, the assessor and the treasurer,” he said.

Gentry recommended having employees in each of the departments who can work to improve communication independent of office politics.

Zamora said he thinks the county has the money it needs — approximately $140,000 a year for six years — to upgrade the software.

While the county was recently awarded money for information technology improvements, the commission will need to discuss software options and costs in more detail.

“It’s nice to sit here and talk,” said Commissioner David Medina. “But let’s take a serious look at it in the next few months as we start looking at next year’s budget. Let’s see if we can come up with it.”

Commissioner Pedro Rael said he thinks the county should also be looking to the legislature for assistance, advocating a bill he and Rep. Elias Barela co-wrote that will give more authority to the county to collect delinquent taxes.

He called Lovato’s approach “a good start.”

“The problem is much, much bigger than just the three years you’re working on,” he told Lovato.

This page was published on February 8, 2010 at 11:31am and is filed under Budget, Reform.