County Attorney Considerations

The County Attorney is not generally very interested in the mechanics of the collections effort. However, there are policy issues which they may want to consider:

• the payment plan
• printed card notifications
• text and email
• the i-Plow Contract

The payment plan is a contract between the County and the defendant. i-Plow calculates and prints this contract, but only as instructed by the Collections Manager, who will follow County policy, which the County Attorney no doubt has a say.

Post cards are interesting in that there are rules for general nongovernmental collections, that do not permit printing of past due amounts on a postcard. We are told that these rules do not apply to government collectors, but we have been told by some County Attorneys to follow them anyway and leave due amounts off printed postcards. Text and email notifications are new to government collections and in some states, the defendant must be given the ability to opt out. There is no clear standard in some state

The point in all this is not to address these issues here. It is our intention now to assure the County Attorney that we are aware that some collections policies will be of concern to the County Attorney and we will always seek and follow recommendations as advised. i-Plow is does not have built in policy to which the County must adhere. Quite the opposite; we follow local policy even when it varies between courts.

The i-Plow Service Contract has been reviewed and accepted by more than 40 County Attorneys. We will continue to adapt, if you find anything that you recommend changing, but we don’t really don’t expect to. You can see a draft on our description of Purchasing Considerations.