DAYTON — The Ohio legislature is planning to use part of the state’s unclaimed funds to help pay for a new football stadium for the Cleveland Browns.
That decision shocked a lot of Ohio taxpayers and raised interest in the unclaimed funds accounts. News Center 7’s Mike Campbell talked with several local agencies about how they handle unclaimed funds and where the money goes if not claimed.
No one in Montgomery County has plans to use unclaimed funds for a stadium or any other pet project. In fact, the people News Center 7 talked with claim they spend a lot of time and effort trying to get the cash back in the hands of the people it belongs to.
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Lindsey Ruth, of Kettering, did not know that she might have money that is owed to them.
“I could see where you could be overloaded very easily and have a busy lifestyle, you know,” Ruth said.
Ruth did hear about the state of Ohio deciding to use millions of dollars in money left in unclaimed funds at the state level to help pay for a new Browns stadium. It surprised her.
“Sounds like a scam from the government,” she said.
State lawmakers are proposing sending $600 million from that account to the Browns. It’s part of a bigger plan to move $1.7 billion from unclaimed funds to a new Ohio Cultural and Sports Facility Performance Grant Fund.
News Center 7 decided to see how many end up in unclaimed fund accounts. Montgomery County is an organization with a billion-dollar budget. The county auditor said they are holding $2.7 million worth of unclaimed funds
“A lot of times it’s refund checks for people who have paid real estate taxes, and they get a refund but never cash the check,” Auditor Karl Keith said.
Keith said besides tax refund checks, unclaimed funds can be from uncashed vendor checks, employee paychecks, believe it or not, and even jail inmates from people having family members put cash in their commissary account and forgetting it when they’re released.
The county makes every effort to contact people over the phone and always lists people owed money on their website. The county gives people or businesses five years to come forward.
“The county will petition the court, and the courts will allow us to move those funds over to the county general fund,” Keith said.
Another group that has unclaimed funds is the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court.
Candace Anderson, Case Management Director with the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court, said, “So the court collects restitution payments in probation cases and then forwards that money to the victims.”
Anderson said the problem is that many victims move or change phones without notice. The court spends a year trying to track them, then posts the information for a shorter time before state law requires them to move that money.
“We then send those to the Ohio Attorney General’s Victim Reparations Fund,” Anderson said.
There are even unclaimed funds at the city level, including in Dayton.
Kina Brown, Director of Finance for the city of Dayton, said, “So, the city’s unclaimed fund balance consists primarily of vendor payments and income tax refunds.”
The city usually only has about 40 people or groups with unclaimed funds at any one time. If city employees don’t reach you in 180 days, the money is sent to unclaimed funds, where it waits for someone to step forward.
Brown said, “So, if it becomes unclaimed, five years or longer, we can then transfer it to the general fund or its original sources of funds.”
Montgomery County has a few accounts that are up in the thousands of dollars. But many accounts can be very low, three-dollar to five-dollar, or twelve-dollar amounts. However, there are also lots of accounts with a hundred or two dollars in them.
You can check the Ohio Department of Commerce for money that might be owed to you. They have a searchable website at unclaimedfunds.ohio.gov.
Right now, there is $4.8 billion in that account.
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