DAY 3
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GREG DERR/The Patriot Ledger
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| A mother with her young child talks about child support in Plymouth County Probate and Family Court. |
What works to make deadbeatS pay up?
States find there is no silver bullet
The Patriot Ledger
One Kentucky judge makes some of the worst deadbeat dads choose between a vasectomy or jail when they won’t pay up. Virginia affixes a blue or pink parking boot to cars to alert passersby that the owner cheats his son or daughter out of child support.
Some states raid bank accounts. Others pull passports. Several print “most wanted” posters.
Officials across the country have tried just about everything to collect money from parents who seem determined to shirk their financial responsibility to children.
But despite sometimes innovative ideas, a host of get-tough laws and tens of thousands of workers charged with tracking down parents and shaking loose the cash, no state has solved the problem of how to get all the money due to kids. Even the state with the best collection rate, Pennsylvania, couldn’t claim a quarter of all child support in fiscal 2003.
“There isn’t one state you can point to and replicate and say, ‘Go do it,’” said Debbie Kline, executive director of the Virginia-based Association for Children for Enforcement of Support. “None of them could be the shining model that all should follow.”
Massachusetts fares slightly above average when it comes to collections, ranking 17th in 2003, according to the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement. Even so, 39 percent of child support went uncollected that year.
Programs that work
While no system is perfect, some states do better than others, and tactics they employ could offer guidance for officials trying to improve performance in Massachusetts.
Although directors in the five states with the best collection rates - North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ohio are the other four - cite a variety of reasons for their better-than-average record, they share these threads:
- Employees in each of the states handle fewer cases than Massachusetts, the Office of Child Support Enforcement reports. Minnesota had one worker for every 155 cases in 2003, compared to 326 per worker in Massachusetts. When only caseworkers are counted, Massachusetts ratio is 507-1. Minnesota’s collection rate is 9 percent better than the Bay State’s.
- The programs are run by counties and overseen by the state, a structure that proponents say gives local officials the flexibility to implement enforcement techniques tailored to a specific area. By contrast, Massachusetts’ child support program is state-run.
Officials elsewhere say they don’t know enough about Massachusetts’ centralized system to judge its effectiveness, but they know what works with their programs. Suspending driver’s licenses may prompt parents in one Ohio county to pay, but property liens may be more effective elsewhere.
“There are 925,000 cases in Ohio. Every case has a unique set of circumstances,” said Joseph Pilat, Ohio’s deputy director in charge of child support. “I know the argument is we should do everything to every case so everyone is treated the same. But we give a lot of flexibility to our county workers and we hope they exercise caution and judgment when they do this.”
Common tools
In theory, there shouldn’t be much difference between states’ performances. Federal law gives states the same basic tools to collect: Officials can suspend driver’s licenses or professional licenses, place liens on homes, intercept tax returns and seize insurance settlements, to name a few options. Caseworkers can tap into the same federal databases to track deadbeats who cross state lines.
Some states, however, are more aggressive than others.
Ohio suspended 17,571 driver’s licenses from April through July of this year. Massachusetts, by contrast, has suspended 15,000 driver’s licenses and professional licenses since 2002.
Minnesota, a state with a comparable caseload to Massachusetts, intercepted about $29.8 million in federal and state income tax refunds in fiscal 2003. During that same time, Massachusetts seized $22.7 million, or 24 percent less.
When parents can’t pay
While those types of programs can bring in millions of dollars, the head of Pennsylvania’s child support program said one of the best ways to get parents to pay is simply to work with them.
Pennsylvania focuses on establishing child support orders that are realistic, taking a hard look at a parent’s income, said Daniel Richard, director of the Bureau of Child Support Enforcement. If someone skips a payment, caseworkers make a call to find out why. Sometimes, the mother or father lost a job, and adjusting the order to reflect the rough patch can mean the difference between some money coming in or none at all, he said.
“It’s easy to pay a bill when you have money,” Richard said. “It’s not easy to pay a bill when you have to juggle. When someone is getting behind, we call them in for a conference, not necessarily before a judge, and try to examine why they aren’t paying.”
Other high-performing states use a customer service model that is significantly different than what Massachusetts has.
One on one
In places such as North Dakota and Minnesota, a family is typically assigned a caseworker who answers questions, meets with parents and sticks with the case from beginning to end. In Massachusetts, parents might talk to a different person every time they call the Department of Revenue, which handles child support payments.
Wayland Campbell, who heads the child support system in Minnesota, said he thinks having one point person works best. “There’s a better chance for accountability,” he said.
Massachusetts is considering such a system and has hired a consultant to study it and other possible changes, said Marilyn Ray Smith, deputy commissioner for the Child Support Enforcement Division at the Department of Revenue.
Massachusetts’ does have its own highlights. It is widely heralded as a national leader in scouring for bank accounts and other financial holdings, then seizing the cash to collect past-due support. That program has yielded $51 million since 1993.
Using automation
And although Massachusetts is short-staffed, its caseworkers do well.
The state collects $562,290 a year per employee, the fourth-highest rate in the country, and above places such as Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Ohio. That performance is due, in part, to the fact that Massachusetts’ system is highly automated.
And while county-run systems may help some states collect, Smith said, she thinks the state-administered program improves efficiency.
“We do very well with the staff that we have,” Smith said. “Could we use more staff? Absolutely.”
Indeed, the nearly $100 billion in child support that has gone uncollected across the country, and the scores of families left struggling as a result, are indications that every state could do better.
Whenever Mike Schwindt, the head of North Dakota’s child support program, thinks he’s doing OK, he recalls a conversation when he boasted that the state collects almost 70 percent of what’s due.
“One mother was quick to point out that we got nothing in her case, so as far as she was concerned, our collection rate was zero,” Schwindt said. “It depends on your perspective.”
Karen Eschbacher may be reached by clicking here.
