It’s good to be the (circuit) clerk: WashCo’s Bette Stamps pockets $100,000 above pay | CF

Clerks clean up on foreclosures | NWAonline.

A tip of the chapeau to Robert Smith’s watchdog piece on Sunday about circuit clerk’s raking in thousands for overseeing auctions of foreclosed property.

In Northwest Arkansas, where county clerks are overseeing a record number of foreclosures, the combined fees associated with this service is reaching six digits a year.

Stamps makes the windfall profits, $104,458 in fees last year, in addition to her annual salary of $80,459.

Circuit clerks can collect as personal payment one-tenth of 1 percent of the sales price of a foreclosure according to Arkansas Code Annotated 21-6-412.

A single foreclosure, the $24.1 million of 10 Pinnacle Point office buildings in Rogers is expected to make about $24,000 for Benton County Circuit Clerk Brenda DeShields.

Legislators are looking at placing a cap on these fees during the next legislative session.

Of course the other great beneficiary of foreclosures are newspapers where an antiquated state law requires that such notifications be placed in paid slots in local newspapers. It’s buoyed legacy media in a time of retreating ad sales. The Arkansas Times blog goes into this topic a bit further.

Christopher Spencer

Christopher Spencer, 36, is the publisher and owner of Ozarks Unbound and the food news site, The Fayetteville Food File. He is the chair of the Fayetteville Creative Economy Action Group and the social media chair of the Northwest Arkansas Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He's also the founder of WordCamp Fayetteville. You can always contact him at cspencer@ozarksunbound.com

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