Troup County Sheriff Donny Turner has engaged a private company to collect the county’s delinquent taxes, relieving the tax commissioner’s office of that responsibility.

Government Tax Solutions Inc. in Carrollton will start work in January on 2009 taxes, which will become delinquent after Nov. 15.

The one-year agreement, which can be renewed, won’t cost taxpayers anything, said County Manager Mike Dobbs. The company will earn collection fees from delinquent taxpayers ranging from $26 to $165, depending on how long the debt has gone unpaid.

“It’s our feeling that the expense of collecting delinquent taxes should fall on the delinquent taxpayers instead of all taxpayers,” said company CEO P.T. Waldrep.

But Tax Commissioner Gary Wood said the agreement not only won’t save anything, but will cost the county more than $100,000. He said his office collected administrative fees of $138,751 for 2008 delinquencies, and it costs only about $30,000 to pay for the part-time work of two personnel who do the collections. The $138,000 nearly pays for half of his staff, he said.

Wood said he’ll now be able to eliminate an employee in December, but “my point is what’s the point?”

“Now the same administrative fees will go to a collection agency and we’ll have somebody without a job at a time when the county is trying to create jobs,” he said. “There was no cost to the county or the taxpayers to start with. Now the collection agency can hire someone in Carrollton to go to work for them.”

By law, the sheriff is responsible for collecting delinquent taxes, but tax commissioners have been doing the job for years as “ex-officio sheriffs,” Dobbs said.

Turner said the agreement with the collection agency was motivated by the county’s budget crunch. The County Commission imposed a hiring freeze and reduced this year’s budget by 5 percent or $2 million because of the sour economy. The commission hopes to avoid furloughs and other cuts.

Government Tax Solutions already collects delinquent taxes for about 70 counties and municipal governments in Georgia, including Meriwether and Carroll counties.

Wood said his office has collected all of the 2008 delinquencies as of the middle of this month, except for 10 bankruptcies totaling $6,396.93. A bankruptcy judge will set up a payment plan.

Wood said Dobbs told him he didn’t care how much it might cost delinquent taxpayers, but “I do care.”

He said 80 percent to 90 percent of the people pay taxes on time and most of the rest are “struggling and need help.”

“I just feel like it’s an additional burden to the delinquent taxpayers while it wasn’t costing the other taxpayers at all,” he said.

One goal of the new agreement is to collect taxes faster, perhaps by July or August, Dobbs said, noting, “Fifty percent of the county’s budget is (property) taxes.I like the idea of speeding up the process.”

If the property has to be posted - the final step before a tax sale - a sheriff’s deputy will do it rather than someone from the tax office, a “safer” procedure, county officials said. But Wood said his personnel have badges and a county car and “we’ve never had a problem, and there’s never been a problem in the state of Georgia to my knowledge.”

Delinquent taxpayers will take payments to the sheriff’s second-floor office at Suite 2700 in the Government Center.

Waldrep said his company has its own liability insurance policy for any errors it might make. Dobbs said the county’s insurance premiums may go down as a result.

Waldrep said his company has also worked in other jurisdictions to collect utility bills, garbage bills and traffic fines. He noted that property can be sold to recoup a garbage bill.

“You mean you can sell someone’s property for not paying a garbage bill?” said Commissioner Ken Smith. “We certainly like our convenience centers.”

Joel Martin can be reached at jmartin@ lagrangenews.com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 235.