LITTLE ROCK — Arkansas could do better at child-support enforcement if the Legislature passed a law requiring the state's enforcement office to monitor early compliance with all new child-support court orders, the office's administrator told lawmakers Wednesday.
The Office of Child Support Enforcement ranked among the top three in a 10-state region and either exceeded or equaled the national average on five performance measures used by the federal government, said administrator Dan McDonald.
But he told the Legislature's Joint Performance Review Committee, "We can be more efficient, and we can be more effective."
He said the office handles child-support cases at the request of a custodial parent and at the request of the state as a result of a request for public assistance. It also handles cases in which employers withhold child-support payments from their employees' wages, he said.
The office's collections last fiscal year totaled $245 million. Support payments are received in about 78 percent of the cases in which court orders have been issued, he said. The rest of the cases are in some stage of establishing paternity or a court order, location of the noncustodial parent or enforcement of an order, he said.
The office has about 102,000 cases with court orders totaling about $610 million in delinquent child-support payments, McDonald said.
Sen. Bobby Glover, D-Carlisle, said he doesn't have "much patience for people that are responsible to a certain extent [for] bringing children into this world and then trying to sidestep our laws. I think it's a sad commentary that we can't come up with enough laws or some avenuewhere we can maybe do a better job."
McDonald said the office often gets a case after a noncustodial parent goes several years without paying support totaling from $10,000 to $50,000 and that parent and his employer can't be tracked down. "We start basically with nothing and build a case in order to make that enforcement case successful. That is a hard way to do business."
If the office could intervene in a support case early and monitor it from the date the order is signed by a judge, "we could be more successful," McDonald said.
This would require the Legislature to pass a law requiring all new child-support orders to be monitored by the office for compliance, he said. There could be exemptions made for custodial parents who want to avoid noncustodial parents because of their fears about "family violence," and other "good causes," he said.
McDonald said the office would monitor cases and contact the noncustodial parents once the cases become 30 days delinquent to remind the parents of their obligations and advise them of other actions that could be taken over time to ensure their compliance. The office would collect, record and disburse all collections for these cases and provide a complete payment history on the cases, he said.
The early monitoring and intervention would require "a modest investment" of $4 million a year in general revenue by the state, he said. That would cover the elimination of $3 million in fees charged to custodial parents and $1 million to help make the office able to handle the increased caseload, he said. Most states don't charge fees for child-support enforcement services, he said.
On the other hand, the statewould save money by keeping more families off public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, McDonald said, though the savings is difficult, if not impossible, to estimate.
Sen. Dave Bisbee, R-Rogers, said it sounded like "we are making the assumption that all these people are good wage earners, intelligent, responsible people."
He said he's "inclined to try to think out of the box.
"Why don't we make the noncustodial parents at the time of the divorce, if they want that divorce, post a $10,000 bond? I have to post a $10,000 bond to do business in the state. It costs me $100 a year to post a $10,000 bond," said Bisbee, a contractor.
"Sounds good to me," Mc-Donald replied.
Bisbee added, "If either one of the parties don't honor the divorce, dissolve the divorce and let them be married again."
He said he's had too many employees that the state has tried to chase down to pay child-support payments, and they change jobs after he does the paperwork to withhold the payments from their wages.
An employee, who makes$2,500 to $3,000 a month and must pay child support for two children, "can't afford to pay their child support," Bisbee said. "There is no way that they can pay that child support. It isn't out of meanness. We can put all the requirements in the world on those folks, and you are not going to get that child support.
"If we want to put all this in force for everybody that makes over $50,000, it will work," Bisbee said.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 10/25/2007