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Noble ends ‘charge it’ bond option
By Kara Hull
The Journal Gazette
ALBION – The Noble County commissioners Monday put an end to the use of credit cards to post bond for jail inmates – two days after the service became available.
The commissioners voted 2-1 to temporarily ban the method of payment after local bail bondsmen Mike Clingerman and Lester Alligood told the commissioners that allowing the cards not only takes away their business but may also get the county in legal trouble. The commissioners plan to hand the matter over to County Attorney James Mowery.
The moratorium does not affect credit-card payments for other court costs, like traffic infractions.
At the recommendation of County Clerk Candice Myers, the commissioners approved using credit-card payments for bond and various court costs using Indianapolis-based credit service PayTRUST Solutions Inc. during a May 22 meeting.
The credit-card service became available for use at the jail Saturday, but Sheriff Gary Leatherman said no one had used it yet.
The county should be wary of a July 12, 2005, Marion County court decision that ordered credit card service Government Payment Service Inc. to stop accepting credit as a form of payment for bonds, Alligood said. The company was sued by bail bondsmen.
Myers – who sat tapping her foot and sighed once while Alligood was speaking – said the court decision doesn’t equate with state law. She handed out copies of the law that says clerks are allowed to take payments through credit cards. “That has nothing to do with PayTRUST,” she said. “It is not an order for the whole state. It’s there in black and white – it is allowable to pay that in credit cards.”
But Commissioner Mark Pankop said he wasn’t ready to throw the Marion County decision aside so easily. “I know that case law has a lot of weight in most cases,” Pankop said. “I think we need to rethink this process and how we’re going to do it.”
Other counties in the state, including Miami and Cass, accept credit-card payments for bond, Myers said.
Miami County Clerk Trudy McCrae said the county has been using PayTRUST for bond payments for at least six months and also uses it as a payment option for traffic infractions and hopes to allow misdemeanors to soon be paid by credit card.
Huntington County approved the use of credit-card payments for bond in 2001 but stopped doing so in July after the decision from the Marion County lawsuit, jail workers in the county previously said. But Huntington County Clerk Vicki Stoffel said Monday she didn’t know that the sheriff’s office had stopped accepting credit cards.
Wabash County Jail officer Charles Staggs said the county does accept bond payments by credit card, but Clerk Lori Draper said the county stopped taking credit cards as payment after a few months of using a credit-card service in 2004. If the sheriff’s office is still accepting them, she doesn’t know about it, she said.
At Monday’s Noble County meeting, Commissioner Jack Herendeen voted against halting credit-card payments, saying it was time to “try something new.”
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Steve Faircloth
A Way Out Bail Bonds
(220) 204-9733 Cell
NSIN# SF0105
LIC. #704058
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