PA treasurer breaks unclaimed property record. How does she compare to predecessors?
Pennsylvania State Treasurer and gubernatorial hopeful Stacy Garrity talks a lot about her performance returning unclaimed property to its rightful owners.
The Pennsylvania Treasury returned a record amount of unclaimed property to Pennsylvanians for a second straight year in 2025, according to data it provided, with $334.1 million in abandoned valuables, stocks and bank accounts transferred to current or former Pennsylvanians.
It is the fourth consecutive year of improvement by the treasury following a dip that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic.
Property returns have seen ups and downs over the past decade. Gross returns increased from 2015 and peaked at $254 million in 2017, before dropping and bottoming out in 2021, the year Garrity took office. They then increased each consecutive year thereafter, with a record value of returns in 2024. That record was surpassed last year.
But inflation-adjusted figures show a slightly more complicated picture. Using December 2025 dollars, two of the best three years from the last decade were from before the current administration.
The treasury is not by any means performing poorly relative to recent years, but it is competing with the previous administration. A treasury spokesman, Steve Chizmar, said the agency does not adjust for inflation.
Chizmar attributed the recent rise in the value of property returns to “factors such as use of technology, Money Match and promotion of unclaimed property” by the treasury.
Money Match, a program that allows the treasury to automatically return property of less than $500, was created in 2024 after legislation proposed by Garrity was signed into law.
The treasury, which has been tasked with returning unclaimed property since the 1990s, says it automatically returned $50 million through Money Match last year, which Garrity said in a December statement “surpassed our goals.” Ordinarily, Pennsylvanians have to apply to get their property back.
The treasurer has made spreading awareness of unclaimed property a focal point of her tenure, but garnered criticism from rivals during her reelection bid for the roughly average return rate. Democratic state Rep. Ryan Bizzaro, a 2024 primary candidate for treasurer, told Spotlight PA during the election that it was “misleading” to not account for the amount of new unclaimed property Pennsylvania receives each year.
The rising amount of property returned to Pennsylvanians comes amid modernization efforts at the treasury. Garrity’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Torsella, kicked off the efforts in 2020. After defeating Torsella that year, Garrity, a Republican, continued the modernization process and lobbied for the Money Match program.
Torsella and Garrity returned a similar amount of property during their first terms: $816.8 million and $843.1 million, respectively. Adjusted for inflation, Torsella gets the edge.
But Garrity has presided over annual increases in the value of property returned, although they have been more modest since her first year in office, which coincided with the end of the pandemic.
Garrity’s tenure has also seen a much higher value of property being auctioned by the treasury, though auctions bring in a tiny fraction of money compared to returned property. Last year, about $855,800 worth of property was auctioned off, nearly double the 10-year average.
