DAY 3

GREG DERR/The Patriot Ledger

A wife and husband go before Judge Michael Livingstone in Plymouth County Probate and Family Court in Plymouth. At left is attorney Patrick Finn, an attorney who represents the state Department of Revenue in child support matters.

State looking at collection deficiencies

By DINA GERDEMAN
The Patriot Ledger

The state and federal governments are paying $900,000 for a top-to-bottom review of Massachusetts’ child support enforcement program.

Policy Studies Inc. of Denver will review all aspects of child support enforcement, from staffing levels to the processing of money, said Marilyn Ray Smith, deputy commissioner for the Department of Revenue’s Child Support Enforcement Division. “There are a lot of things we need to do better.”

State officials say they know that the division, which deals with child support collections, is understaffed and that mothers waiting for money are frustrated.

Smith said that the study, which is expected to be complete in February, might ultimately lead to the hiring of more staff or the restructuring of where workers are placed.

“I’m not going to ask for more staff until we are clear that we are organized properly in a way that will provide good quality service to families of the commonwealth,” she said.

But even before Policy Studies finishes its review, the Department of Revenue is making some changes in an effort to collect more cash for children:

• In July the state opened 20 additional phone lines to address the problem of frequent busy signals at its call center. However, the callers that got through were put on hold longer - as long as two hours. Now the state is hiring 11 more workers to staff its overburdened call center.
• In an effort to get money into parents’ hands more quickly, the state will begin offering debit cards to custodial parents this fall, allowing the state to load child support payments onto plastic the same day the money comes in.
• Within the next six weeks, the state is planning to contract with private search companies that track down deadbeats to plug into their proprietary databases and get access to more information in an effort to find more missing deadbeats.

Despite flaws in the system, state officials note that collections have increased steadily during the past 15 years, and argue that the state’s enforcement efforts are working for many families.

“You see the part of the system where it didn’t work well, but you don’t see the part that worked like clockwork,” Smith said. “You have to look at the money we have collected and that thousands of families are no longer on public assistance because of the amount we collected.

“But we do know there’s more that we can do,” Smith said.

Dina Gerdeman may be reached by clicking here.

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Some states try anything

• A family court judge in Kentucky is giving a choice to men with multiple children who are tens of thousands of dollars behind on child support: have a vasectomy or go to jail for 30 days. The option applies to men who have had more than four children with at least three different women and who owe more than $10,000 in court-ordered support. So far, at least two men have taken his offer.
  
  
• Deadbeats in Virginia sometimes return to their cars to find a pink or powder blue boot on their front wheel, making the car immobile. Blue boots are attached to signify the parent is failing to support a son; pink represents a daughter. A sticker on the car reads, "This vehicle has been seized by the sheriff for unpaid child support." The boot stays until payment is made. Otherwise, the car is sold at auction.
  
  
• State police in Washington are helping with child support enforcement by turning over money seized at crime scenes or accidents. Whenever money is taken as evidence, whether during a drug bust or for safekeeping after a car accident, state patrols punch the owner's name into an online computer system to see if child support is owed.