BY JACOB SZETO

SALEM- An Oregon Politico investigation has revealed that state agencies and local governments are claiming their unclaimed property.

The Unclaimed Property office is a division of the Department of State Lands. This division’s goal is to “reunite as many people as possible with their money or possessions.” Often this brings to mind only individuals having unclaimed property, but much of the unclaimed property includes business and government owners.

An alert reader tipped this story when they found many local governments and state agencies had unclaimed property entries in the searchable database. These entries don’t provide many details, and further contact had to be made with the Unclaimed Property division for property types and amounts.

Upon request, the Unclaimed Property division searched their database for entries over $5,000. The request was narrowed to some of the largest government entities in Oregon because searching the entire database was infeasible. Included in the request were the City of Portland, Multnomah County, Lane County, Clackamas County, Oregon Department of Transportation and Department of Human Services.

Not a single entry for over $5,000 was found. While the governments searched have many smaller entries, it appears that the amounts are minimal.

When asked why the governments wouldn’t clean up the smaller entries, Unclaimed Property Manager Patrick Tate had several answers. The property may be worth less than the time to claim it, entries may be payments that already have been paid, there might be an additional party on the entry or there might be a dispute over the property.