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Internal Compliance outlines $24M annual collections, P-card compliance, and AI pilots
Summary
Internal Compliance presented its role in revenue recovery (including $24 million target in collections), code enforcement citations, P-card compliance work and exploratory use of AI tools to streamline outreach and payments.
Ophelia Tamayo, director of Internal Compliance, told the committee on May 15 that her unit, established by the mayor, focuses on operational efficiencies, revenue recovery and compliance across county departments and constitutional offices.
Tamayo said the department’s collections and debt-recovery work has produced roughly $23.3–$24 million in gross collections in a recent year and that the county’s outstanding receivables inventory is substantially larger, which she described as “in the millions” and later cited as about $3 billion in outstanding debt (a figure discussed during questions). She said the department collects for multiple county customers, including Jackson Health, and that older debts (sometimes five or more years old) are part of the inventory. “We collect debt that is very dated, sometimes more than 5 years, could be 10 years. But we have successfully collected over $20,000,000 a year in gross collections,” Tamayo said.
Tamayo also described the department’s code enforcement citation administration (citations and a related trust fund that supports code-enforcement technology) and P-card (procurement card) compliance functions. She outlined plans to streamline P-card policies, reduce overrides, create dashboards with ITD for departmental visibility and pilot a chatbot and automated outbound calling/texting for collections and payments. She said the credit-and-collections team is already evaluating automated calling and text reminders and that combining multiple debts from a single resident into one offer can improve recovery rates.
Commissioners asked for details on the size of outstanding debt, collection rates and citation increases; Tamayo and finance staff said the county’s receivables portfolio and collections practice are complex and that OMB/collections are working on dashboards and metrics to provide more real-time visibility.
Ending: Internal Compliance asked commissioners to treat the department as a strategic partner and to route operational questions to the unit for early engagement; staff said dashboards and AI pilots will be used to improve collections and operational transparency.
