Posted on 06/11/2007 7:48:54 AM PDT by ZGuy
The state's habitual seizure of supposedly unclaimed property in bank and stock brokerage accounts, safety deposit boxes and other repositories of wealth has always been more than a little questionable.
The theory of "escheat," as it's called, is faintly medieval, assuming that idle property can be taken by a king for his personal use by divine right, a distant cousin of the doctrine of "eminent domain" under which property may be taken for public use.
California, however, refined it into a lucrative source of income, even making it easier to seize property when the state's budget was, as it often is, out of balance.
Banks and other holders of property have been required to transfer the assumed unclaimed assets to the State Controller's Office (although they often held onto it as long as possible for their own reasons). The controller would then make a token effort at finding the rightful owner, often nothing more than a fine-print newspaper ad, before depositing the property -- sold if necessary -- into the state treasury. So far, the state has seized $5.1 billion in property from 8.2 million accounts over the last half-century.
Last week, a federal judge ordered the state to stop seizures until it had vastly improved its efforts to find the rightful owners -- rejecting the state's rather unseemly claims that it would lose a lucrative source of income, about $400 million a year currently. His ruling followed a federal appellate court ruling that seizing property and giving faint notice to owners was unconstitutional. He hinted that he would seize control of the system if he was not satisfied that the revised system was workable.
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
Nice catch. Thanks for the post.
I put this on par with asset seizures in law enforcement...seize that property and a chunk of it becomes your budget...ya that’s the ticket..it’s a drug war..ya...
No, Ca’s was modeled after NY’s. The problem was that CA used subcontractors to go after the funds. NY mandates that Banks,etc voluntarily remit or face fines. NY has over 8 billion it is holding.
So what if we are stealing, did you see how much money we raised?
Gee, Officer. If you stop me from robbing this house/robbing that bank, you're cutting off a lucrative source of my income and I wont be able to feed my children!
“So what if we are stealing, did you see how much money we raised?”
I doubt you would be saying that if it was your money they seized.
I’m sure some liberal bleeding heart would find a way to help you make it legal.
The graft must be so obvious that even a Federal Judge has to put a stop to it.
I was trying to point out how ridiculous their argument sounded.
Do you have examples of circumstances under which CA used subcontractors? My experience was that we acted under the rules you say are mandated by NY -- which would seem to confirm your statement that our law was modelled after NY's.
If you read teh decision in this case, the subcontractor/contributor got 10-12% of the take. Basically they examine the stock records of corporations and looked for shares that had not been voted or cashed a dividend check in three? years or more. Then they took those shares and turned them over to the state minus their cut.
NY does not do this. I believe that this case will be overturned on appeal to the extent that it is not lawful for state to sub out this work and that the state will need to give somewaht better notice. Otherwise the law will stand. There’s too many jobs and too much loot that the states take in. In 2006 NYS made 375,000,000. In 2005 it make over 500mm.
Interesting. Thank you.
ping
The state of Illinois recently had a promotional campaign about this.
The state treasurer— who overcame (but didn’t convincingly put to bed) questions of past corruption— made the rounds of the morning news shows.
There he grandiously handed out oversized checks bearing his signature that had been made out to fawning citizens... who verily gushed over the generosity of the state for giving back to them what was theirs to begin with.
It was essentially a campaign commercial for this schmuck
Makes you want to puke
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