By: Robin Ford Wallace, Reporter

What started as a shadowy debate issue in this year’s hotly contested Dade County sheriff’s race, then escalated into an examination of the way rural sheriff’s departments do business with their jail bail bondsmen, has been settled – at least for the outgoing administration, said Dade County Executive and Commission Chairman Ted Rumley.

“No later than the end of next week, the Friday, supposedly all the bonding companies will be paid up,” said Rumley last week after a meeting with Dade’s current Sheriff Patrick Cannon, now serving out the last few days of his term, and County Attorney Robin Rogers. “Robin’s handling it right now. He’s got this process that the judge has got to sign off on, you know, and agree with all the amounts they’ve got, which they’ve already looked at them. So when the bonding companies start with the new sheriff, there’s supposed to be zero owed.”

Ray Cross, who defeated Cannon in this summer’s Republican primary, then Democratic contender Philip in the November general election, takes office at midnight on Dec. 31.

Stacks of FIFA (short for Latin legal term fieri facias) liens at the Dade County Courthouse show unpaid bond forfeitures dating from as far back as 2005 for over $313,000 amassed by Gary’s Bail Bonding and Dade County Bail Bonding, two bonding companies that still do business with the county, as well as by Brock Bonding, an earlier company associated with Gary’s.

But Rumley says that after much examination of the records, Robin Rogers and the sheriff have determined the amount the three companies actually owe the county to be much less, somewhere around $50,000 for all three put together.

“He had to review each case and find out if the guy was incarcerated at the time,” said Rumley. “Robin’s spent some time on it, because it’s got to be right.”   

Bail bonds are money amounts required by judges to guarantee that individuals arrested for crimes and released pending trial will in fact return to face the charges against them. 

Individuals who own property, such as a house, can use that as their bond, but the vast majority of arrestees – 95 to 97 percent, according to the Dade County District’s Attorney office – go through the bonding companies. The bondsmen, whose privilege of doing business in a county is in the gift of the local sheriff, make their money by charging arrestees a percentage – typically 10 percent – of the bail bond. Then, if their client does not show up for trial, they are on the hook for the bond amount. 

Attorney Rogers had explained earlier that the governing statute allows the bondsmen to recoup generous percentages of the forfeiture depending on when and if they produce the bonded individual – 95 percent if within 120 days, 50 percent if within two years, he said.

But in Dade, no such negotiations appear to have been made. Rather, arrestees had skipped bail, bond amounts had gone unpaid and judges had issued “judgments absolute” against the bonding companies, resulting in the stacks of FIFAs.

As a condition of doing business in Dade County, bonding companies deposit $30,000 in interest-bearing accounts in local banks, and the sheriff has the right to dip into those escrows should bond companies not pay their obligations. But Cannon had not done so in all the years the forfeitures had been piling up.  

Cannon declined to speak to the Sentinel on several occasions as to why he had made no efforts to collect, but Rumley reported that, to him, the sheriff had pled ignorance. “Patrick said the reason that it got out of hand was because the DA had not given him reports,” said Rumley. “He didn’t have any idea because they were not sharing that with him. I don’t know how it works but that’s what he’s said all along. He said you can’t enforce something if you don’t know.” 

The DA’s office, meanwhile –the agency that brought the forfeitures to the county’s attention as a potential source of uncollected revenues in the first place – had earlier told the Sentinel that after the judgment absolute, enforcement is up to the sheriff, and it is up to the county commission and county attorney to remind him.

That seems to be what has ultimately happened here, albeit after considerable delay and billable hours.  Attorney Rogers told the county commission at its November meeting, then again at its December session, that the sheriff’s department was working hard to determine the amounts owed; and he told the Sentinel the department would comply with an open records request about bond forfeitures only if paid $20 an hour for six hours to produce five pages Rogers had determined to be responsive.       

But now, though as of press time he could not furnish exact amounts, Rumley said the sheriff’s department, bonding companies and county commission had reached consensus. “They’ve got the money in the bank, the $30,000, and if they don’t pay, then Robin’s got the authority now, or will have, that if they don’t want to cut us the check which they’ve agreed to, we’ll take it out of that,” he said.

He said he thought the estimated $50,000 figure to be collected was fair because Rogers had told him so. “I’m satisfied because my attorney looked me in the eye and told me we’re bringing this to a head,” he said.   

In any case, he said, when the new sheriff takes over next month: “They’ll still have their $30K apiece in the bank and they’ll start with a clean slate.”

Will the same bonding companies continue to do business after January? “If the new sheriff sees fit, I reckon,” said Rumley.   

The bail bond issue arose during the county’s summer high-and-dry period before real estate taxes begin rolling in in the fall. Rumley had issued, as he does each year, a plea to all departments to call in any neglected receivables. The D.A.’s office responded with a reference to the neglected bond forfeitures.     

Bond forfeitures have never seemed to figure before as revenue for the county. The Sentinel checked with Dade’s county clerks for the past 16 years and they reported seeing none turning up as income. 

The Sentinel also checked with Ladell McCullough of Henderson, Hutcherson & McCullough, the county’s longtime auditors, and she said she hadn’t noticed bond forfeitures as reported revenues on any county she audited – though she would be mindful of it in the future.

So will he, said Rumley. “After seeing what happened with this, definitely, I guarantee you, Ray [Cross] and I will communicate monthly, if not every court date,” he said.

And so, he believes, will other commissioners across the region. “Seems like it’s spread throughout Georgia, the ones that I’ve talked to,” he said. “We’re looking at a lot of places that have never been looked at for revenue.”

The Sentinel asked another county boss, Sole Commissioner Jason Winters of Chattooga, about bail bond forfeitures. Though careful to specify the whole function was so far from his office, he didn’t know who the bondsmen for Chattooga were, Winters said: “I'm sure our county faces the same thing.” 

And he said Chattooga and other counties might well find themselves addressing the issue in coming months. “As we’re all scraping for funds, we don’t want to feel we’re leaving any money on the table,” he said.