Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced his administration will implement a new aggressive approach to improve collections owed to the city, including millions of dollars in unpaid parking tickets, unpaid fees, fines and penalties. The reforms are anticipated to bring in up to an additional $33 million in collections in 2012.
The City will improve its collections on outstanding debt by cracking down on enforcement and consolidating the billing and collections process under City Comptroller Amer Ahmad in the Department of Revenue. Previously, several City departments performed their own billing and collection functions. With the new reforms, all billing and collection systems will be administered by the Department of Revenue. The new reforms being announced include the following:
- Improved Tax Audit Collections, $24 million: Additionally, the City has significantly improved tax audits by focusing on key historical scofflaws. Next year, the Comptroller is going to collect $24 million from increased tax audits.
- Increased Individual Debt Consolidation, $5 million: The Comptroller will also improve collections by consolidating debt types for individuals who owe for more than one type. He will also call for contracted collection agencies to increase rates to recover $5 million in debts. For example, there is one Chicagoan who owes $87,000 in parking tickets on four different license plates that go back to 2005, $70,000 on one plate alone. This case is now in the hands of a city law firm.
- Overhaul of Parking Fee Collections, $1 million: The City is already in negotiations with car rental businesses to collect their debts. For example, a single rental car company owes $300,000 in outstanding parking tickets. If these go unpaid the Comptroller will continue to put holds on business licenses and required medallions. In the last two weeks alone the Department of Revenue collected $156,000 from major fleet accounts and is pursuing $300,000 more. Ahmad anticipates collecting $1 million with the parking fleet collection overhaul.
