SALEM – Oregon’s repository for abandoned property is about to reach a milestone – and that’s in spite of the best efforts of the people who work there.

The state is on track this year to eclipse the $200 million mark in property and dollars that have gone unclaimed and sent to government for safe-keeping.

The money comes from a variety of sources including uncashed payroll checks, estates with no known heirs, stocks and bonds, utility refunds, unclaimed tax refunds and rental deposits, and abandoned safe deposit boxes.

The uncollected dollars are rising even though the state is having more success than ever at finding the rightful owners of unclaimed dollars, said Cheryl Gladden, a claims coordinator with the unclaimed property section of the Department of State Lands, which tries to reconnect people with their money.

Improving technology has made is easier for the state to find people who have lost assets and also for individuals to check the database themselves, she said.

”We are paying out a record number of dollars, I think because of the ease of the system and the ease of searches,” she said.

The state receives more than $20 million in unclaimed assets annually and returns about $8 million to those owners, she said.

Some of it may be yours.

There are almost 1.4 million separate unclaimed properties in the state database, which dates back to 1967. At the end of 2005, the grand total was $195.2 million.

At the Department of State Lands, the money is held in the Common School Fund, a trust fund that also receives the profits from economic activity on state-owned land.

Interest earned on that fund goes to help K-12 schools.

Oregon is one of just two states that use interest from unclaimed money to help schools, the other is North Dakota, Gladden said.

In other states, interest earnings go into the general fund, she said.

It is the responsibility of employers, businesses, estate trustees, landlords and banks to try to track down people who are owed money or who abandon safe deposit boxes. But if those efforts fail, the assets are sent to the state.

However, there is one notable exception. The 1997 Legislature removed unclaimed gift certificates from the list of assets considered unclaimed property.

As a result, the business issuer of the gift certificate gets to keep the money – even if no good or service was actually purchased. Accordingly, the unclaimed assets do not become part of the Common School Fund.

The Democrat-controlled state Senate in 2005 passed a bill that would have returned gift certificates to the category of unclaimed property and added unpaid store gift cards. The legislation was buried in the Republican-controlled House.

State Sen. Ben Westlund, I-Tumalo, who was one of the sponsors for that legislation, said gift cards and gift certificates should belong to the person who gets them – not to the retailer or restaurant that ”didn’t sell one dime of product.”

The Department of State Lands estimates that an additional $13 million a year would be in the category of unclaimed property – and would help generate more money for schools – if that legislation had passed.

All states hold unclaimed assets, and the total value of those is estimated at more than $15 billion, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

Under unclaimed property law – which dates back to British common law – states do not take permanent title to the property but act as custodians and safeguard it for the rightful owner or their heir, the association said on its Web site.

Oregon tries to hunt down the owners of unclaimed property worth $5,000 or more, but puts the names of anyone who is owed at least $10 on an online searchable database.

The state workers who try to hunt down the rightful owners of abandoned property employ sophisticated tracking software, like the programs used by debt collection agencies, Gladden said.

Many people are happily surprised to learn they are on a list of people who are owed money, she said.

Ironically, Westlund is among them, according to a search of the database.

”It would be nice if it was $2.5 million bucks,” he joked. He is running for governor and is trying to raise $3 million to finance his campaign.

He said the unclaimed property is a single share of Texaco stock – he just hasn’t taken the trouble to claim it.

In one recent Oregon case, two sisters were informed that their mother had left behind a $109,000 bank account, which was registered at an old address. In another, a technology company executive had lost the necessary paperwork for more than $2.5 million in stock options.

Every October, businesses send abandoned assets to the state. But banks send the contents of safe deposit boxes – between 200 and 300 a year – every month.

Those valuables – coins, jewelry, watches, mostly – are catalogued and stored in a row of massive steel cabinets, each with a combination lock, hidden deep inside a state office building north of the Capitol.

But space is limited. After at least a year – and several published notices in an effort to locate owners – the state auctions off the contents of safe deposit boxes, and the proceeds are then held in the trust fund.

The last auction, in August 2005, raised more than $100,000, Gladden said. The proceeds are now in the Common School Fund, where they will sit in perpetuity until the owner of those assets comes forward.

Got money?

Easy-to-navigate computer searches are helping people quickly discover whether they have unclaimed dollars. The searches are free, and it’s also free to reclaim lost property.

Oregon: www.oregon.gov /DSL/UP/index.shtml

California: http://scoweb.sco.ca.gov /UCP/

Other states: www.missingmoney.com or www.unclaimed.org