I agree with “Unclaimed fund, unnecessary fight” (Editorial, Jan. 6) regarding unclaimed property.
Your editorial board correctly pointed out that unclaimed property belongs in state hands because the state has the necessary procedures to identify the rightful owners of unclaimed property.
The $88 million worth of property that my office has identified during Phase 1 of our examination of the Cook County treasurer’s office is not the county’s nor the state’s money to spend. This money belongs to the roughly 100,000 Cook County residents who may, for example, have overpaid their property taxes or be entitled to an inheritance that they did not know about.
This property must be given back to its rightful owners. In fact, Illinois unclaimed-property law ensures that the money be held for the owners–it never becomes the property of the state.
On July 1, 1999, the administration of the Unclaimed Property Act was transferred to the state treasurer’s office. Since that time, we have aggressively stepped up our efforts to return unclaimed property (insurance benefits, gift certificates, stocks and dividends, uncashed payroll checks, for example).
We currently have more than $907 million of unclaimed property belonging to more than 3 million people. In an effort to return this money, we have been traveling around the state with our laptops, encouraging folks to check for their names. Many of your readers have had an opportunity to check their name while picking up a city sticker at Chicago Clerk Jim Laski’s office, while attending a White Sox game, at senior fairs and shopping malls all over the state or even at a county fair. Other ways to check our list include looking at the biannual listings published in area newspapers every February and August or, better yet, just logging on to our Web site–www.cashdash.net.
Our efforts seem to be paying off. This year alone we are on a pace to more than double unclaimed property claims returning property to more than 55,000 owners.
