By Jessie Burchette
Salisbury Post
Each year, Rowan County turns over more than $1 million in fines and forfeitures to the Rowan-Salisbury and Kannapolis school systems.
In the past 10 years, the county has collected and disbursed $11.5 million to the school systems.
The $1.4 million collected this past fiscal year equals more than 1 cent on the county tax rate.
The fines and forfeitures turned over to the schools are not part of the budget process or counted in the per-pupil funding allocation.
Most of the money comes through the court system, where state law requires fines and forfeitures go to the schools.
The flow of money is expected to grow as the number of court cases continues to rise.
"It's going to continue to go up," said Jeff Barger, Rowan County Clerk of Court.
For example, on a traffic case when a driver is required to pay court costs and a fine, the amount of the fine goes to the schools.
While the bulk of the money comes from the court system, additional dollars come from other county sources.
The late listing penalty collected by the county tax office now goes to the schools. Property owners who fail to meet the listing deadline must pay a 10 percent penalty.
Finance Director Leslie Heidrick said the county began giving the late listing fees to the schools two years ago after a school system elsewhere in North Carolina won a court case.
Heidrick said the sheriff's office occasionally turns over a small amount of seized funds that also go to the schools.
Heidrick, who has been finance director for 10 years, said the fines and forfeitures are not part of the money budgeted to the schools.
Until 2000, the fines and forfeitures were shown in the budget, but after that they were taken out. The money shows in audits, but not the budget.
Late last month, Don Sayers, an attorney for the Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education, said the school system opted not to have him attend bond forfeiture hearings because the county commissioners would cut the county's funding to the schools.
"The school board is expending its money — they're not getting anything out of it. It's simply offset by the county commissioners," Sayers said in an interview with the Post.
That hasn't been done in the past 10 years, according to the county finance director. She doesn't know what the practice was previously.
Heidrick said she has never had any county commissioner ask her about the fines and forfeitures.
County Manager Bill Cowan also said no commissioner has ever said anything to him about the fines and forfeitures in the two years he has been county manager.
Fines and forfeitures have never been part of the budget discussions. And the funds are not counted in the county's calculation of local per-pupil spending.
For the past several years, county commissioners have worked to fund the schools at the state average or an amended formula that lops off the counties with the highest and lowest allocations.
In this budget year, county commissioners approved $32.7 million for current expense of the Rowan-Salisbury and Kannapolis school systems, or about $1,477 per student.
Based on a projected school enrollment of 22,119 students, the fines and forfeitures will likely add $60 or more to the total per pupil spending in the current year.
A portion of the fines and forfeitures turned over to the schools includes bond forfeitures.
For example, in October, the Rowan Clerk of Courts office collected $39,634 that will flow to the two school systems. In November, the bond forfeitures totaled $7,000.
Barger and Audra Lowman, a deputy clerk of court, said the bond forfeiture process is complicated and involves a lot of paperwork. The process of collecting on a forfeited bond can take up to three years, if a bondsman is familiar with the system.
Lowman said bondsmen know the system and how to recoup their money.
She said nine out of 10 bonds that are forfeited are cash bonds posted by individuals, particularly Hispanics. In most cases, they miss their court date and the bond is forfeited. However, they are usually arrested again, but they don't realize that they can file paperwork and get the bond back.
Contact Jessie Burchette at 704-797-4254 or jburchette@ salisburypost.com.
Sun, Dec 16, 2007
