Tracking ‘Deadbeats’: States Struggle With Deadline

Most recently, there was the “flying data” problem. That was the term used to tell California legislators about another cluster headache involving the state’s expensive, erratic child support computer tracking system.

The system was designed to help locate deadbeat parents who aren’t paying child support. But the $50,000 that one parent owes in support payment can, well, fly from that file into someone else’s file, making it appear as though that person owes the $50,000.

Meanwhile, California officials still don’t know whether this system, a $300-million state and federal investment, can work as planned.

The continuing problems come at a time when the nation is less than two months away from a federal deadline to have tracking systems up and running in every state (not very likely) and at a time when welfare reform has placed an even greater importance on support payments.

In 1980 the federal government pressed the states to improve support collections. That became a mandate with the Family Support Act of 1988, which set a deadline of October 1995 for having automated state systems in place, mostly paid for through federal funds.

The states have taken much of the heat for failing to come in on time and within budget with systems that work. Indeed, the federal deadline was subsequently rolled back to October of this year. But it’s evident that federal officials deserve some blame.

States plunged ahead without substantive guidance. Indeed, the federal Child Support Enforcement Office was three years late in developing federal requirements for what it expected to get from these computer systems, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office. For some states, that meant delays, expensive contract modifications and even starting over. The same federal office also told some states to adopt computer systems that were in use in other states, whether or not they fit the state’s needs.

The GAO says that substantial federal direction remains necessary. The bar graph shows, for example, that total child support collections increased sharply between fiscal 1990 and 1995. But total support cases rose from 13 million to 20 million in the same period. Moreover, the degree of arrearage did not improve--some level of payment was being made in only 18% to 20% of all cases.

Los Angeles and Orange counties recently set records for the amounts of child support collected on behalf of custodial parents, but there are caveats here as well. The Los Angeles high, for fiscal 1996-97, is more than $211 million, but at least $2 billion is owed.

That puts a premium on two things. The first involves local initiatives, like that pushed by county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti this week to determine whether any county employees are behind on support payments. And Congress and the president must understand that the states required much more of them in terms of direction and oversight. If that can occur now, perhaps a few hundred million dollars can be saved, and much more raked in for the nation’s needy children.

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Child Support

Total U.S. collections (in billions of dollars)

1990: 6.0

1991: 6.9

1992: 8.0

1993: 8.9

1994: 9.9

1995: 10.8