Lottery winnings and other state-paid funds could be withheld to settle debts under legislation heard by the Judiciary Committee Feb. 13.<\/p>\n
LB870, introduced by Lincoln Sen. Kate Bolz, would create the Public Debt Recovery Program, which would use state treasury funds to satisfy an individual’s debt to a public entity. The funds could include income tax refunds, lottery prizes, payroll, contract payments and unclaimed property and would be used to pay only debts owed to state agencies, courts and political subdivisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy office has identified over $8.7 million in debts owed to Nebraska municipalities,\u201d Bolz said. \u201cI think it\u2019s only fair that people pay their debts and I think it\u2019s important that funds go to their intended purposes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Bolz said the bill would create a new centralized office within the State Treasurer\u2019s Office and would be modeled after other states\u2019 successful programs.<\/p>\n
Gary Krumland of the League of Nebraska Municipalities testified in support of LB870. He said Nebraska communities\u2019 largest area of past due debt is utility bills and it sometimes takes years to collect those debts through property liens.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith utilities, if somebody doesn\u2019t pay, then everybody else has to pay little more\u2014so having an extra tool to collect this money would be very helpful,\u201d Krumland said.<\/p>\n
State Treasurer Don Stenberg testified in opposition to the bill, saying the state already has laws permitting state agencies to use collection agencies to recover debts. He also questioned the cost effectiveness of the bill, saying it would create a \u201cvery large hearing agency\u201d whose duties currently are carried out by each municipality.<\/p>\n
The committee took no immediate action on LB870.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lottery winnings and other state-paid funds could be withheld to settle debts under legislation heard by the Judiciary Committee Feb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-14676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-kate-bolz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14676"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14681,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14676\/revisions\/14681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}