BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana’s revenue department has been working for months to create a new debt collection office, but its chief said Thursday it will be years before state government has a comprehensive system to attack delinquent accounts.

Revenue Secretary Tim Barfield said Louisiana is on track with how other states rolled out similar efforts, describing the detailed work required to build an integrated and automated debt collection system across 200 state agencies.

“If you can…