By JASON TIDD

Staff writer

With over $470,000 of unclaimed property in the county, some residents were bound to walk away from the courthouse happy when the state treasurer visited Friday.

Debbie Bowman was one of them.

“My twin sister (Denise Allen) saw it in the paper, and she called and said, ‘Debbie, would you go up and check that,’” Bowman said. “I pull up our maiden names and it goes back to when we were little kids about four years old in Wichita, Kansas, and it came up $483 each. It evidently is a life insurance policy that nobody ever claimed.”

Christmas spending was her idea for how to use the money.

“Christmas in October, it’s like winning the lottery,” she said.

Bowman spent less than five minutes filling out paperwork as one of many county residents who attended State Treasurer Jake LaTurner’s county tour Friday.

LaTurner’s office is tasked with returning over $350 million of unclaimed property statewide. Over $470,000 of unclaimed property sits in Marion County bank accounts, uncashed checks, stock shares, mineral royalties, and other valuables.

“The money’s not sitting there, it’s a liability,” LaTurner said. “On an annual basis, we bring in about $50 million of unclaimed property, and historically treasurers in the past have returned about half of that a year.”

Marion was the 94th visited by the treasurer’s tour of Kansas’ 105 counties to return property and promote initiatives, including LearningQuest and KansasABLE savings plans.

They will finish the county tour by Nov. 9, visiting 105 tours in five months.

LaTurner has been in office six months after former Treasurer Ron Estes was elected to Congress to replace Mike Pompeo, who was appointed as CIA director.

“So far we have returned $7.5 million this year,” LaTurner said. “We’re returning a record rate of unclaimed property.”