Bill lets collection firms tack fees onto Ohio student-loan debt

Even as state Attorney General Mike DeWine expressed concern in August about collection fees that can jack up the debt owed by former college students, a bill backed by his office was moving through the legislature to codify those fees.

Senate Bill 227, passed on Dec. 6, makes a variety of changes to how the attorney general’s office does business. Consumer advocates are questioning the one that says that, when the office hires a private law firm to collect delinquent debts, the fees paid to those firms “shall be fully recoverable from the party indebted” — tacked on to the principal, interest and late fees the debtor already owes, rather than deducted from it.

It puts no limit on how high the fees can be.

Read more at the Columbus Dispatch