Support Enforcement

When a private company took over the state's child support enforcement program in Baltimore in November 1996, it promised a sharp rise in collections and better service for everybody who deals with the system.Now, Lockheed Martin IMS faces a $407,845 penalty, for failing to meet its collection goals, along with complaints that problems with child support enforcement are worse than ever.The problems come as Lockheed Martin IMS is trying to persuade Gov. Parris N. Glendening and the state legislature to grant a one-year extension of its three-year contract.

Alan D. Johnson says he feels as if he was held up on the street. It's just that his $810 was taken from him by pencil-pushing bureaucrats rather than gun-wielding thugs.The Baltimore County postal worker wants his money back. He has been saying that for nearly three years, but getting back his state income tax refunds that were seized to cover child-support payments he didn't owe has proved frustratingly difficult.Johnson doesn't have his money, but state officials said yesterday that a check will be going out for the full amount he is owed.

Bonnie J. Brereton, a former Baltimore police officer, died Tuesday of lung cancer at home in Swoope, Va. She was 50.She joined the Police Department in 1978 and left after 11 years to become an inmate counselor at Augusta (Va.) Correctional Center. Since 1994, she had been a support enforcement specialist for the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement.Born in Pasadena, Ms. Brereton graduated from Glen Burnie High School and earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Baltimore.

The Maryland Child Support Enforcement Administration has pulled in nearly $40 million in child-support payments since October 1996 from deadbeat parents who drive cars or look for jobs.But the state still has a $1 billion backlog of unpaid support, in part because, as some Baltimore-area women have found out, there are ways to avoid paying even when state officials track those who owe through driving records and employment applications. Their husbands -- 90 percent of deadbeat parents are fathers -- have moved out of state or have arranged to be paid under the table for their jobs.

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office hopes to turn a loss of about $32,000 in federal money for child support enforcement into a $200,000 gain, and deadbeat parents will be the losers.Maryland sheriff's departments are compensated by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement for serving child support summonses and court-ordered arrest warrants under which deadbeat parents are apprehended.The federal government had been paying $30 for each child support summons and $245 for each arrest warrant.

The Maryland Child Support Enforcement Administration has pulled in nearly $40 million in child-support payments since October 1996 from deadbeat parents who drive cars or look for jobs.But the state still has a $1 billion backlog of unpaid support, in part because, as some Baltimore-area women have found out, there are ways to avoid paying even when state officials track those who owe through driving records and employment applications. Their husbands -- 90 percent of deadbeat parents are fathers -- have moved out of state or have arranged to be paid under the table for their jobs.

The Carroll County Sheriff's Office hopes to turn a loss of about $32,000 in federal money for child support enforcement into a $200,000 gain, and deadbeat parents will be the losers.Maryland sheriff's departments are compensated by the federal nTC Office of Child Support Enforcement for serving child support summonses and court-ordered arrest warrants under which deadbeat parents are apprehended.The federal government had been paying $30 for each child support summons and $245 for each arrest warrant.

COLLECTING child support from an unwilling parent is like trying to catch a fly barehanded. The welfare reform law of 1996 included some tough new provisions. But it can take a long time for the states to put them into action.Exhibit A is what happened when Congress ordered the states to install better computer systems to keep track of child-support cases and help nail missing parents.That was in 1988. The federal government was covering most of the cost.Today -- 10 years and nearly $3 billion later -- what's the result?

The Maryland Child Support Enforcement Administration has pulled in nearly $40 million in child-support payments since October 1996 from deadbeat parents who drive cars or look for jobs.But the state still has a $1 billion backlog of unpaid support, in part because, as some Baltimore-area women have found out, there are ways to avoid paying even when state officials track those who owe through driving records and employment applications. Their husbands -- 90 percent of deadbeat parents are fathers -- have moved out of state or have arranged to be paid under the table for their jobs.

A former Westminster-area man who failed to pay child support for his three children between November 1995 and November 1996 was placed on five years' probation after pleading guilty in Carroll County Circuit Court yesterday.According to the terms of the plea arrangement, Daniel D. Taylor, 34, of Baltimore, was given a three-year suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay $105 child support and $95 weekly toward arrears of nearly $23,700, on condition that the defendant immediately pay $1,000 and sign over a $4,000 bond to the Carroll County Bureau of Support Enforcement.

The reality facing families in the child support system is far from simple. Demanding, as a recent Baltimore Sun editorial did, that parents "pay up or else" - and suggesting that the main thing the Child Support Enforcement Administration needs to do is use available tools and get tougher on "deadbeats" - could harm the very children the child support system is supposed to serve. It's important to remember that half of all unpaid child support is not even owed to children. When a struggling custodial mother applies for welfare cash assistance, the law requires her to establish a child support obligation against the father and simultaneously assign the resulting child support payments to the government.

A state legislative audit has found that the Child Support Enforcement Administration is owed $1.5 billion in unpaid child support payments. That sounds like a lot of money - and a lot of deadbeat dads - until you realize the figure includes the cumulative unpaid child support since the agency began keeping records in the 1974. Much of the debt still on the books was incurred by absent parents who have long since died or disappeared; the state's chief auditor estimates that only about half of it would be considered collectible today.

Maryland Secretary of Human Resources Brenda Donald told lawmakers yesterday that her agency is doing a better job of using a new computer program to keep track of children in state care. At a General Assembly Joint Audit Committee meeting, Donald said that a recent audit documenting problems with "Chessie" - the Children's Electronic Social Services Information Exchange - "really is old news." Social services employees have entered data from 90 percent of foster care and abuse and neglect investigations, Donald said.

The state Department of Human Resources has been underusing tools available to collect $1.57 billion in unpaid child support from deadbeat parents in nearly 200,000 cases, according to a legislative audit released yesterday. For example, the department's Child Support Enforcement Administration did not use its ability to have the occupational licenses of delinquent parents suspended, did not always collect and record their Social Security numbers and did not fully use automated techniques to identify and seize their bank accounts, the audit said.

The zeal to enforce child-support payments in the wake of the 1996 welfare reforms created an unexpected group of victims: men forced to pay 18 years of support for children who are not theirs - children who, in many cases, they've never even met. Writing in the American Bar Association's Family Law Quarterly, Washington attorney Ronald K. Henry details how this problem developed, and proposes some common-sense solutions. The problem is relatively new, and stems in large part from the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which restructured the welfare system.

The heated debates during the crafting of the 1996 welfare reform law were memorable for one point of agreement between those on opposite sides of the issue. If welfare mothers were being asked to be more responsible for their children's economic well-being, both sides concurred, then absentee dads were fair game, too. Get the bums to pay child support, the thinking went, and the welfare rolls would shrink. Within the first four years of passage of the law, the rolls did shrink and the number of welfare cases closed because of child support collected increased by 56 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services Child support collection rates have been rising ever since, from $12 billion to $22 billion since the law was passed.

Martin Hall says there are two reasons he's taking steps to start paying the $16,725 in back child support he owes: his newfound faith and his mother. Hall, who has a 7-year-old son with a former girlfriend, became a Jehovah's Witness in June. The Scripture, he says, instructs a man to "take care of his household." Meanwhile, his mother sent him an e-mail about a two-week statewide amnesty program to help parents pay up. "Some things you take even more seriously as you get older," said Hall, who is 37 and unemployed.

Parents who have fallen behind on child support and would like to work out payments without fear of arrest can take advantage of a two-week amnesty program, starting tomorrow, offered by the Anne Arundel County Office of Child Support Enforcement. The amnesty is open to people who have an outstanding warrant connected to a failure to pay support, are about to have a driver's license suspended for nonsupport or have fallen behind in payments, said Pat Feeney, director of the child-support office.

The Baltimore County justice system is working to track down more "deadbeat" fathers and mothers and is pushing for new ways to collect the nearly $30 million they owe in child support to county parents. County Sheriff R. Jay Fisher's deputies are serving more nonsupport warrants than ever before. Prosecutors have started charging nonpaying parents criminally. And judges and other county officials are trying to secure federal funding for a program that would meld job training with strict child support enforcement.

Maximus Inc., the Virginia company that has run Baltimore's child support enforcement system for the past four years, has lost its appeal of the state's decision to award a new contract to provide those services to a rival firm. In a decision released yesterday, the Maryland State Board of Contract Appeals ruled that the Department of Human Resources acted properly in awarding the contract to Policy Studies Inc. of Denver. Losing the contract is a severe blow to Maximus because it locks the company out of what may be the nation's largest contract for privatized child support enforcement services for at least 4 1/4 years and possibly as long as 6 1/4 years.