Prosecutor responds to public comments at Land Bank meeting

To the editor:

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the statements by Commissioners Daniels and Britton regarding my “refusal” to do work for the Land Bank.  

First and foremost, the Prosecutor’s Office does not represent the Land Bank; and therefore, I should not be doing work for the Land Bank. Any work we have previously done for the Land Bank has been a gift.  

The Prosecutor’s Office pays all of the expenses of this and the Land Bank reimburses only the publication fees, title search fees, and court costs. We recently began doing our own title searches so that fee would not have been reimbursed in future foreclosures. The Land Bank actually gets a bigger percentage of delinquent tax foreclosures (the DTAC fund) than the Prosecutor’s Office.  

Secondly, and more importantly: The Land Bank is contracting with the Treasurer to do a tax certificate sale. I have a problem with this and here is why: the Treasurer sells delinquent tax certificates to the Land Bank on a “pick and choose” basis.  

The Land Bank then files a lien against the property for greater than the delinquent taxes causing the home owner/land owner to have to pay even more than the delinquent taxes in order to save their property. The Commissioners entered into this sort of agreement on the Treasurer’s behalf in October 2024 with a private company. This contract was entered into about 60 days before the new tax bills came out showing a significant increase in property taxes by the County. 

Frankly, I find it deplorable that the County is selling tax certificates to a private company, allowing that company to profit and making it even harder for people who are already struggling to save their homes and doing so after the taxes went up so substantially.  
                
As to the statements by Dave Daniels that “they gave me extra money to do foreclosures” I would say this: In 2019 I was permitted to hire an additional attorney bringing the staff in my office back to the number in the office in 2006 when I started in the Prosecutor’s Office. There are still less attorneys and staff in this office than in the surrounding counties.  

I would also point out that Mr. Daniels has no concept of what the Prosecutor’s Office does. I have repeatedly invited the Commissioners to come into the office to try to understand the civil and criminal work done in this office so they might have an idea; however, they have refused. I would want to know what an office does before I spoke publicly about it or prepared a budget for that office. 

While an additional attorney was added in 2019, our office was requested by the Commissioners office to take on the representation of the Child Support Enforcement Agency in 2016. This added two more court dockets to our office as well as the legal work that goes with representing another agency. We did not hire additional employees to assist in this and we did this in order to save the County money as well as receive money from the State for the benefit of the County. 
                
Finally, my understanding is that the participants in the Land Bank meetings regularly complain that my office is slow in getting their foreclosures done (apparently not understanding the court process at all) so it would seem they would be happy to do their own foreclosures and avoid “waiting” on my office.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to respond to the very unprofessional and misguided statements of those at the Land Bank meeting. If you have any other questions or would like to discuss anything further, please do not hesitate to contact me.
 
Sincerely,
Anneka P. Collins
Highland County Prosecuting Attorney