State can do better
in hunt for deadbeat parents, study says

The state is underutilizing one of the more effective tools available to go after deadbeat dads, a news audit has found, and is doing so even as Massachusetts families are stiffed out of millions of dollars in child support each year.

State law allows the Child Support Enforcement office to yank the driver’s licenses of parents who cheat their children out of support. In a two-month period reviewed by the state auditor’s office, only 3 percent of the 27,000 parents who were eligible to lose driving privileges even received warning letters.

“License suspension should only be used as a last resort because it could deprive a parent of the means of getting to work,” state Auditor Joseph DeNucci said in a statement. “However, there are many cases in which a warning can get the attention of delinquent parents and encourage them to work out a payment schedule.”

To lose a license, a parent must be at least 56 days behind in payments or owe more than $500.

There is certainly cash to go after.

Massachusetts parents owe a total of about $1.5 billion in back child support. Nearly 25,000 parents are behind by at least $10,000 and have not made a payment in the last six months.

Debbie Kline, executive director of the Virginia-based Association for Children for Enforcement of Support, said license suspensions are one of the most effective ways to force deadbeats to pay up.

“Everybody has a driver’s license, so it’s something that’s going to affect a huge number of people,” Kline said.

“For those people who don’t want to break the law and want to make sure they keep their driver’s license, they will do whatever it takes to pay their child support,” she added. “If we lived in a perfect world, a non-custodial parent would pay just because it’s their child, but we don’t live in a perfect world.”

Tim Connolly, a spokesman for the state Department of Revenue, which oversees the child support collection agency, agreed that the license suspension program is effective. He called it “probably our most successful” way of getting parents to pay.

To that end, the state is already making improvements, he said.

Connolly said a recent change put in place by the agency allows warning letters to be automatically issued once a deadbeat owes a certain amount.

“We’ve been expanding it more and more, using it more,” he said. “We agree with the auditor. We do want to use it more often and we are.”

A Patriot Ledger special report published in 2004 found that tens of thousands of deadbeats get by without paying, leaving mothers and taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Mothers described an agency where phones were constantly busy and said they would be left on hold for as long as two hours when they tried to get answers about payments. Fathers said the state mishandled paperwork and misdirected money.

The state audit released yesterday found other problems, too.

The audit questioned why more than $170,000 was reimbursed for rental cars and related costs to information technology contractors working with the child support collection agency. The agency’s own policies say taxis and public transit should be considered when such options are cheaper.

The audit also found several instances of rental cars paid for by the state and being used for what appeared to be personal travel.

In one case, three contract employees stayed at a hotel 4.5 miles from the data center where they worked, but a typical monthly rental car receipt for one of the workers showed he traveled 2,000 miles, according to the audit. Another employee’s receipt showed 1,964 miles of travel.

In both cases, reimbursements were approved.

Karen Eschbacher may be reached at keschbacher@ledger.com.