Norman Hires Debt Collector to Recover About $1 Million in Fines

By Gan Matthews, NEWS 9

NORMAN, Oklahoma – If you ever gotten a parking or speeding ticket in Norman and forgot to pay it, don't worry. You'll soon be getting a call to remind you.

The city is getting serious about its' collections. In Municipal Court, the people come and go, paying off the fines they owe. Tyler Owen came in to pay off a parking ticket he got last week.

"If I had waited one more day instead of being $10, it would have been $25," said OU student Tyler Owen. "I came up here as soon as I could."

Not everybody pays off a fine so soon. In fact, Norman has a 10-year back log of unpaid fines. That's 6,600 outstanding warrants, totaling about $1 million.

"I believe, because we are a college town, I think a lot of people come through maybe going to an OU game, maybe left school, graduated and forgot they had a citation," Municipal Court Clerk Ronda Guerrero said.

Late last year, Norman announced a six-week amnesty program to encourage people to pay off their fines at a reduced cost. It had limited success. The amnesty program only collected $28,000. So now Norman has gone to Plan B, hiring a collection agency to go after the unpaid fines.

House Bill 1800, passed last year, permits cities to hire collection agencies to collect court penalties, costs and fees. Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Bartlesville have already hired collection agencies.

But people who come in to pay their fines after being contacted by the collection agency may wish they had taken advantage of the amnesty program.

"It's gonna be more expensive 'cause it's going to be 25 percent more on their warrant amount, so they'll pay 25 percent more," Guerrero said.

After Julia Hicks heard about the new program, she came in to pay off some fines before the collection agency called.

"Of course people don't want to be paying these fines whenever they don't think that they're really guilty, but it's needed because it's the law," said OU student Julia Hicks. "We have to abide by it. They give out a lot of tickets, but if they're not getting paid, they ought to figure out some way to get it paid."

Plan B starts soon. Norman will hire a Texas-based group that currently represents more than 2,000 governmental bodies to collect the fines.