Editorial: Pennsylvania should streamline unclaimed property process

Sto Rox Community Federal Credit Union was holding a share of money for a woman named Genevieve.

Genevieve didn’t withdraw it. We don’t know why. She could have moved. She might have forgotten about it. Maybe a parent opened the account for her and she never even knew about it. Maybe she passed away.

What we do know is that after a period of time, Genevieve’s money was passed along to the state for safekeeping.

Today it is mingled in a pool of unclaimed property money held by Pennsylvania for thousands of other people — and companies — just like her. There is more than $4 billion jumbled in a stew of things like misplaced pensions, neglected college funds, uncashed stock dividends, misdirected insurance payments and the liquidated value of real property in safe deposit boxes.

Connecting people and money is something the government generally does pretty well. Don’t pay your taxes? You are located. Drive on the turnpike without an E-ZPass on a trip? Your bill could be waiting for you in the mailbox before you get home.

Yet with this large pot of cash, the government has been content to sit on it and make the people come to them. Why?

The whole system depends on you knowing that you have property to claim, even though Pennsylvania doesn’t require institutions to tell you that your money has been turned over to the state.

Then there are the hurdles. The database does not tell you how much an individual account is worth. Let’s look at Genevieve’s again. The entry only says it is “under $100.” That could be almost nothing. Collecting the money could mean taking time off work, finding supporting documentation, going to get the paperwork notarized, sending it to Harrisburg or taking it to a state legislator’s office.

And that’s if no one is dead. Pennsylvania makes you buy a copy of a death certificate from the state to send back to the state to include in the paperwork. If the owner’s estate was already closed, you might have to involve lawyers to reopen it without knowing the value of the property in question. All that means claiming the property might be a losing proposition.

State Treasurer Stacy Garrity is looking to make the process more automatic. A Spotlight PA story shows that requires changes to the law. A bill that would allow that was just voted out of committee unanimously.

Good.

The change would apply to funds under $5,000 for owners, not heirs. It wouldn’t apply to businesses or organizations. Those more complicated cases would still require applications.

Garrity admitted it wouldn’t significantly increase the amount of property returned. Big deal. Increasing it at all is a good thing.

But more importantly, this is a way that government can take the roadblocks out of the process. There is no reason to make obtaining your own money unnecessarily difficult. Change the law and send Genevieve her check.