The Anson County tax collector says a list of residents who have not paid their property taxes will be published in The Anson Record on or before the June 30 deadline set by state law.

Despite paying to advertise the listings in Wadesboro-based shopper The Express, the county tax office has not yet satisfied state requirements to officially publish the list of county tax liens.

N.C. General Statute 1-597 states that tax liens “shall be published in a newspaper with a general circulation to actual paid subscribers.”

The Express says on its website that the publication is bulk-mailed to every address in the county. Since it has no paid subscribers, it does not meet the legal requirements for publication.

Anson County Tax Collector Joe Dutton said he was aware when the tax notices were published in The Express that it was not “the certified newspaper” in Anson County.

“It was a cost issue,” he said. “I am planning to run them in the Record before the deadline. We do recognize that The Anson Record is the only certified newspaper of record in Anson County.”

Dutton added that since the delinquent tax listings ran in The Express, nearly $600,000 of the unpaid property taxes have now been collected. That reduces the size and cost of the advertisement that must be placed in the Record.

“I’m trying to be prudent with the county’s money,” he said. “We know that there is a tax delinquency problem and we’re doing our best to resolve it.”

Chris McLaughlin of the University of North Carolina School of Government said free newspapers, monthly newspapers, publications in existence for fewer than six months and newspapers with only a handful of subscribers do mot meet the statutory definition of a general-circulation newspaper.

However, McLaughlin said that if local governments do not properly advertise the tax liens, there are no penalties that he’s aware of.

“There is nothing in the statutes about a penalty for not advertising,” he said. “But it can be problematic for in rem foreclosures that are done as part of the tax collection process.”

In rem is Latin for “in the thing itself” and refers to a civil action against property rather than a lawsuit against the owner or possessor.

“There’s no problem at all with local governments listing delinquent taxpayers on their websites,” McLaughlin wrote in a 2012 article. “Heck, a county could rent one of those electronic billboards on Route 40 to post lists of property tax scofflaws. But it also needs to print an ad in the newspaper. GS 105-369 explicitly requires that the delinquent tax liens be published ‘in one or more newspapers having general circulation in the taxing unit.’ Bills have been introduced at the General Assembly to permit Web advertising of tax liens in recent years, but none has become law.”