"I promise to continue to provide professional, friendly and efficient service for the people of Lawrence County." - Stephen Dale Burcham

Record in Office (2004 to present)

Property Tax Collection through Banks:

As soon as Stephen took office in 2004, he began working on ways to improve the Treasurer's office and the services it provides Lawrence County Citizens. One of his initial plans was to make it easier for citizens to pay their property taxes by partnering with Banks and allowing banks to collect taxes for the County.

Participating Banks include:

Ohio River Bank
Ohio Valley Bank
Oak Hill Banks (Wesbanco)
US Banks
Liberty Federal
Savings Bank
City National Bank

This provides 17 additional property tax collection points throughout the County. In the first year of collection approximately 10% of all property taxes collected was through this new program. In the second year, this grew to approximately 18% and we are now in the third year of this program.

Long-term Investment Strategy

All certificates of deposit held by the County are now competitively bid to obtain the best interest rate for the County, which was not the case prior to Burcham's first term in office. As a result of actively managing the County's investment portfolio, actual revenues exceeded projections by several hundred thousand dollars each year. This helped the County commissioners to balance the budget annually.

Collection of Delinquent Property Taxes

Burcham instituted a number of programs to aggressively pursue the amount of delinquent taxes that existed when he took office (14.8 million dollars). Last report from the Auditor's office indicates that this amount has been reduced to 7.7 million dollars. Additional procedures have been introduced where individual follow-up letters and telephone calls are placed in order to collect delinquent tax liability.

In 2008, the Treasurer's office brought suit against 37 delinquent parcels, which represents approximately $560,000 in unpaid property taxes. Some of these parcels were delinquent for over 25 years and most of these properties have been abandoned and include commercial and residential sites that are being returned to productive use.

Approximately 70% of all real estate taxes collected go directly to our school systems to provide education to our children.

Streamline Office Efficiency