Natchez and Adams County governments have wrestled with what to do about past-due court fines for years and years.

The city and county have hired collection agencies and considered other, outside resources to collect the money owed.

Depending upon whom you ask the volume of uncollected fines is either millions upon millions of dollars, or it’s far less.

The difference is in the collectability of those fines.

Unlike a private business in which the owner is allowed to simply forgive a debt deemed highly unlikely to be collected and thus “write it off” the books, government cannot do so.

In fact, Section 100 of the Mississippi Constitution strictly forbids the practice. The goal beyond the prohibition is to avoid making it perfectly legal for a municipal government to simply give a friend a “freebie” and wipe their debts clean.

The challenge over time has become that the actual amount of collectable fines remaining on the books seems difficult with which to grapple.

The state auditor’s office suggests that municipalities identify and document the doubtful accounts on the list.

If that’s being done, it’s certainly not being discussed. The taxpayers deserve to know what’s truly delinquent, what’s collectable and what’s not.

Eventually, we also think local lawmakers need to consider how the state could allow truly old and uncollectable debts to be removed from the books. Over time as people who owe fines die, move away and ways to contact them are lost, it’s ridiculous to think the fines are ever going to be paid.

Keeping them on the books only makes us all believe a pot of gold exists at the end of the collection rainbow. That may be true in some cases, but in most, the pot is likely more of a small thimble.