Snapshots

ONE STEP BACK, TWO STEPS FORWARD

Illinois missed the deadline for automated enforcement, yet won an
improvement award/or child support collection. Lawmakers continue to refine the
stated model domestic violence law. Now we need to make certain it's enforced

CHILD SUPPORT

As welfare limits kick in, collection becomes crucial

by Jessica Winski

John Mellor didn't expect to end up helping other parents collect child support. When he attended his first meeting of the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support, he was more interested in collecting the $43,000 owed him and his wife by their exes. "I figured I'd go, maybe pick up something useful, and still get home in time to catch the end of the Bulls game," he says. Instead, he found himself volunteering to head the Springfield chapter of ACES, a 35,000- member national organization dedicated to helping custodial parents.

Mellor now works with Springfield- area parents trying to catch up with deadbeat partners. Some are owed as much as $80,000. But Mellor has discovered the agency charged with enforcement, the Department of Public Aid, offers little help. "They come here when they've had no success elsewhere. I'm not surprised there are so many parents out there owed so much because I've lived it."

Others are surprised. Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan, for one. So he wants child support enforcement transferred to his office, a move that proved successful in Texas. While lawmakers consider the switch, federal mandates should force some improvement in Illinois' program, one of the worst in the country by most accounts. There isn't much time. As new welfare limits start kicking recipients off the rolls, child support collection will become crucial.

"Illinois has been notoriously bad in collecting child support," says Mellor. Statistics back up his claim. A 1996 report by the National Center for Youth Law ranked Illinois dead last on overall performance, including establishing support orders and collecting the payments. That report, based on 1994 figures, also put Illinois 47th when it comes to locating parents who owe money.

Still, Dean Schott, spokesman for the public aid department, says "it isn't fair to compare" because the states have different systems. Further, he argues, Illinois has improved. He points to a record $295.8 million collected in fiscal year 1997. That year the state established 42,539 paternities, another record. And the National Child Support Enforcement Association gave Illinois its most improved award last year.

Even so, $1.4 billion in child support has gone uncollected since 1976, the year the state started collecting; 220,000 deadbeat parents continue to owe money in Illinois, 46,000 of whom owe more than $10,000; and Illinois missed a federal deadline for rolling out an automated child support system — a task the state has had nine years to accomplish. "Illinois just isn't making it happen" is Cherie Norman's assessment. She coordinates the West Central Cook County ACES chapter.

The problem is expensive for the state, as well as parents. Missing the deadline for an automated collection system could cost Illinois as much as $700 million in federal funds, though Schott expects Congress to reduce the penalty to $1 million. "Illinois is not unique," he says. "Other states are much further behind."

Schott puts some of the blame on the federal government, which dragged its feet on the rules and regulations governing creation of such databases. Further, federal officials initially suggested that states without systems emulate those that have them. That was bad advice, Schott maintains. Illinois copied Virginia's system and eventually had to scrap 50 percent of the work because "a Virginia or a Tennessee are not Illinois or California, where the caseloads are tremendous."

Illinois' child support database is expected to be up and running this summer, several months after the deadline. Once online, this new $34.4 million system will combine the child support records of the state's 102 counties in a central database accessible by the "partners" in child support: employees of the departments of Public Aid and Human Services, clerks of the Circuit Court, staff members of the attorney general's offices in 87 counties and the state's attorneys' offices in 15 counties. With all the information in one place, state officials expect up-to-date case information to be available to officials at the same time.

This is good news, especially now that the stakes are higher. "In a world of time-limited welfare, good child support collection is even more important," says Nancy Ebb, senior staff attorney and child support expert for the Children's Defense Fund, a non-

28 / June 1998 Illinois Issues

profit advocacy organization. "Those who get kicked off welfare will most likely end up with very low wages and will not make ends meet without the child support owed them."

According to public aid, half of Illinois' aid recipients are on welfare because they do not regularly receive child support payments. "Child support collection is an integral part of the welfare reform process," says Schott.

The feds agree. The 1996 welfare reform act requires all states to make changes to their child support systems. Those changes are the "tools proven effective by pioneering states," says Ebb, whose organization ranked Illinois in its "Child Support Hall of Shame" four years ago.

A key tool is the new- hire reporting system, in place in Illinois since October of last year. Employers are now required to report the names of all recently hired employees in the state within 20 days. Public aid then matches these names against a list of people who owe child support, hoping to find deadbeats who change jobs frequently. Once a debtor is identified, an income withholding order can be forwarded to a new employer. In fact, income- withholding is the most effective way to increase collections. (An income withholding order was one way Mellor was able to recover some support from his ex-wife, who has since fled the state.) In less than a year, one million names have already been entered into the system and an additional $30 million in support is expected to be raised each year.

A second tool, the authority to revoke a deadbeat's driver's and professional licenses, is also at work in Illinois. Maine pioneered the practice in 1993, and in 16 months that state collected from 57 percent of the people it threatened with suspension. "The idea is to get people's attention, and they certainly care about their cars," says Ebb. "We don't really want them to lose their licenses. We want them to be able to go to work and earn . money."

Under Illinois' program, 830 driver's licenses have been suspended to date. But no one is sure how much money this approach brings in. Schott doesn't know, and neither does the secretary of state's office. Sixty occupational licenses have been revoked in this state since 1995. Combined with threats to revoke those licenses, this part of the program has produced $5.1 million in support.

Illinois can also seize a deadbeat's assets, and the state has moved to streamline the process establishing paternity — two moves that are further increasing collections.

While federal requirements should force improvements in Illinois' child support system, this hasn't stopped public aid from making its own improvements.

The agency has convened an advisory committee, including lawyers, lawmakers and ACES members, to find ways to improve collection. A final report is due in December. But the committee may be a last-ditch effort to keep child support within the department. With last year's executive agency reorganization, public aid ceded most of its responsibilities to the new Department of Human Services. Aside from child support, public aid — now about a fourth its original size — handles the Medicaid program.

"There is lots of interest in moving child support," says advisory committee member and Republican state Sen. Christine Radogno of LaGrange. "Frankly, my sense is that [the possible switch] is what this committee is trying to avoid."

She would like to see the panel spur public aid to get its "house in order." Failing that, she says she would support a change. Meanwhile, Schott insists that "given the opportunity to fully implement all the tools the legislature and governor have given us, we could continue our record collections."

Nevertheless, the House has already overwhelmingly approved a measure moving the program to the attorney general's office. The measure was held in the Senate.

And despite Schott's optimism, Cheryl Niro, special counsel to the attorney general, argues the tools are not a real solution. They represent "just another leverage we can use to get parents to fulfill their obligation," she says. "This is not a question of tinkering. What is needed is a total reorganization."

Such reorganization should end assembly line- style handling of child support cases, she believes, where a different person handles each step, including establishing paternity, locating the noncustodial parent and enforcing collections.

"Right now, the process is fractured," with public aid handling administration and the attorney general or the state's attorney handling the legal enforcement. "It's a question of whether you move the legal functions into public aid or the administrative functions into [our] office," says Niro.

She favors her office because "ultimately you have to send all the files to a lawyer somewhere. You lose time and information in the process. You could even lose the file." And she believes the move would establish accountability.

Illinois Issues June 1998 / 29