Officials from the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and the District Attorney’s office are meeting to work out a way to better enforce laws against writing bad checks and prosecute people who break the law. “This is something we’ve heard complaints about from our members,” says Meg Mahoney, the chamber’s senior vice president of product development. Mahoney says bad checks cost small businesses thousands of dollars. “They don’t have the money, and the goods are gone,” she says.
District Attorney Hillar Moore and staffers have met with Mahoney and other chamber officials. One of the things under discussion is to set up a program where a business owner only needs to make one trip to the D.A.’s office to start a bad check case, Mahoney says. “We’re in the early data gathering stage, but the D.A. has said he’s open to doing whatever he can to ease the process,” she says.—Timothy Boone
