State Government, Collection Agency Agree to Increase Oversight on Contract

In 2009, Minnesota-based The Affiliated Group started working with the state of South Dakota, helping the government recoup bad-debt losses. South Dakota was looking at at least $19 million in previously uncollected debt.

“We do work for several different departments within the state,” The Affiliated Group’s president (and current president of ACA International), Mark Neeb, told insideARM.com. “Each department worked with us separately, creating its own reporting requirements.”

It’s the reporting requirements, or the perceived lack of them, that caused a South Dakota newspaper, The Aberdeen News, to make some inquiries into the kind of oversight the state was providing to The Affiliated Group.

“I’m not even convinced that there’s been poor oversight on the part of South Dakota,” Neeb said. “I just think the transparency wasn’t there. The thing they haven’t done was to put all the work we do under one set of reporting requirements.”

That’s the next step that the South Dakota government is planning on doing. The Affiliated Group will now provide quarterly reports on its collections activities to the Office of the Commissioner of Administration, currently headed by Paul Kinsman. The reporting schedule begins 1 October.

The reports will make it clear to both the government and its constituents that the state government is being treated fairly in its contract with The Affiliated Group. “I personally have no doubt we are,” Kinsman was quoted as saying in a Committee meeting.

“The citizens of South Dakota deserve this kind of transparency in all the contracts that the state enters into on their behalf,” Neeb told insideARM.com. “We’re working for the citizens of south Dakota. This kind of reporting that lets citizens know that their tax dollars are being spent wisely is a good thing.”