news-record.com

GREENSBORO - The Guilford County District Attorney's Office has discontinued its worthless check program.

District Attorney Doug Henderson chose to stop the program because it was no longer generating enough fees to cover its expenses, Henderson said. Its two employees are being reassigned to other courthouse positions, and the magistrate's office will resume handling bad check cases.

"It was a good program, and I hate like the mischief to discontinue it," Henderson said. "But our numbers have been declining in the past few years. It's almost completely dried up the worthless check program we had."

The General Assembly in 2003 provided for any judicial district to establish a worthless check program to help free up judicial calendars and allow people to avoid criminal charges by paying money owed through administrative channels.

But Henderson said the use of checks is declining and, along with it, the need for worthless check programs.

Guilford County processed about 30 percent fewer bad checks in the 2007-08 fiscal year than in the previous fiscal year, declining from 1,611 checks in 2007 to 1,125 in 2008, McVey said.

One of the conditions of the program was that it pay for itself through handling fees district attorneys can charge the people using the program.

The legislature sets the fee: $60 per batch of checks; a batch is one or two checks.

Numbers from the Administrative Office of the Courts support Henderson's decision.

About half of worthless check programs statewide are seeing less demand, said Basil McVey, a court services officer with the Administrative Office of the Courts.

"It was a good program for the merchants," Henderson said. "It was a good program for the courts because it kept the majority of these cases out of the courts."

The DA's office will spend the next two months shepherding the last cases through the program.

Beginning Jan. 19, recipients of bad checks must file criminal charges with the Guilford County Magistrate's Office.

Contact Sonja Elmquist at 373-7090 or sonja.elmquist@news-record.com