House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014 Regular Session

Posted:	June 21, 2013 11:23 AM
From:	Representative R. Lee James
To:	All House members
Subject:	Inter-Governmental Payment Offset Program Act

I am writing to ask you to join me as a co-sponsor of my upcoming legislation that will improve the ability of the Commonwealth and our local governments to collect on unpaid debts. The Treasury Offset Program is the U.S. Department of Treasury's centralized debt collection program. That program allows the federal government to collect unpaid debts to the Commonwealth from federal payments to contractors. In other words, the federal government will take a portion of its payments to contracts to pay off that contractor's debt to the Commonwealth. However, in order to take advantage of the program, the Commonwealth must agree to reciprocate for the debts owed to the federal government. My legislation will re-authorize the Commonwealth to enter into such an agreement. Similar legislation had been passed in Act 26 of 2011, but we must re-enact it due to recent litigation over an unrelated provision of the law. This legislation will provide us with an opportunity to expand the program to include local governments in two ways. First, the Commonwealth will be permitted to submit debts on behalf of local governments for the federal offset program. Second, the Commonwealth will be authorized to operate its own offset program in conjunction participating local governments. If you have any questions regarding this legislation, please contact my office at 783-8188. Thank you.
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Introduced as HB1624