{"id":9206,"date":"2016-08-29T03:03:54","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T07:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=9206"},"modified":"2016-08-29T03:03:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-29T07:03:54","slug":"scofflaws-paid-46k-in-back-fines-to-brick-under-new-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/08\/scofflaws-paid-46k-in-back-fines-to-brick-under-new-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Scofflaws Paid $46K in Back Fines to Brick Under New Program"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1912\" style=\"width: 1034px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1912\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1912\" src=\"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel.jpg\" alt=\"Gavel (Credit: Brian Turner\/Flickr)\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" srcset=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel-600x450.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1912\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gavel (Credit: Brian Turner\/Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The long arm of the law may not have been enough to compel a number of scofflaws to pay their municipal court fines \u2013 but a debt collector has had better luck.<\/p>\n<p>Pioneer Credit was hired in 2014 under a state program that allows municipalities to contract with collections agencies to recover past-due fines from municipal courts. It took about a year for Brick\u2019s collection to be approved by the state and the judiciary, and the company began seeking out scofflaws in May 2015.<\/p>\n<p>In the first year of collections, the company recovered more than $46,000, Mayor John Ducey said.<\/p>\n<p>Under the debt collection program, a surcharge of up to 22 percent is added to whatever debt is owed. That percentage is kept by Pioneer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe town gets their full amount,\u201d said Ducey.<\/p>\n<p>The township council recently approved a yearlong contract extension with Pioneer, which will last through June 2017.<\/p>\n<p>When Ducey announced the start of the program in 2014, the township had about $650,000 in fines outstanding.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/08\/scofflaws-paid-46k-in-back-fines-to-brick-under-new-program\/\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The long arm of the law may not have been enough to compel a number of scofflaws to pay their municipal court fines \u2013 but a debt collector has had better luck. Pioneer Credit was hired in 2014 under a state program that allows municipalities to contract with collections agencies to recover past-due fines from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[24,1345,1860,1344,2392],"class_list":["post-9206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-police-fire-courts","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-collections-agency","tag-debt","tag-fines","tag-unpaid-fines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2ou","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}