New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced today that his office has identified more than $5 million in unclaimed funds for local governments across the state.
Source: NEWS From the Office of the New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli
Posted June 18, 2014.
After reaching out and alerting officials from counties, cities, towns and villages of this lost money, DiNapoli’s office has returned more than $1.5 million so far. DiNapoli’s office oversees the state’s 31 million unclaimed funds accounts, valued at more than $13 billion.
“Every dollar owed to local governments should be collected and put to good use to help provide essential services for New Yorkers and to relieve the burden on taxpayers around the state,” DiNapoli said. “My office has returned more than $1.5 million in unclaimed funds to local governments in the last few weeks, but $3.5 million is still waiting to be claimed. I encourage local government officials to work with my office so that we can return the money as soon as possible.”
DiNapoli’s office identified nearly 10,000 unclaimed funds accounts valued at $5,023,246 by matching the names of 1,600 local governments against the state’s unclaimed funds database. The search found 6,592 accounts valued at $3.8 million owed to counties (including New York City’s five boroughs), 800 accounts valued at $317,232 owed to cities, 1,552 accounts valued at $636,232 owed to towns and 798 accounts valued at $262,908 owed to villages.
Representatives from DiNapoli’s office sent letters to financial officers of local governments that appear in the unclaimed funds database and asked them to confirm ownership in order to process the claims and return the money. Ownership is verified by demonstrating a connection to the address or the account associated with the funds.
Click hereto view a chart showing the number of outstanding accounts in the name of local governments, and the values, by region.
It often requires a bit of imagination to find an entity as the names reported in Comptroller's listing may differ substantially from the agency's or organization's "official name" as the example for “Board of Education” listed 23 jurisdictions while Bd of Ed listed 13 districts and high school listed 29 names.
Using generic names such as the following produced the number of "hits" indicated:
County of 108
County Clerk 81
Town of 411
Town Clerk 2
Village of 165
Village Clerk 1
Police Dept 4
SUNY 187
BOCES 31
Central School 8
CSD 13
Union Free School 5
Employee organizations reported by the Comptroller include the following
Employee organizations reported by the Comptroller include the following
Faculty Asso 3
CSEA Local 6
State and local governments and other organizations can search the Comptroller's site via the “Search for Organization” link on the Office of Unclaimed Funds’ website or by calling the call center toll-free at 1-800-221-9311.