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Linking child support payments to licenses effective, officials say Sunday, Jul 13, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - When the state Education Department asked teachers and school administrators for comments last spring on a proposed code of ethics for educators, one part of the code was criticized as going too far, even though it has been a state law for over a decade. Some objected to an item in the proposed code stating that an educator's professional license could be suspended for non-payment of child support. "Some people said we should not meddle into their private lives," Assistant Education Commissioner Beverly Williams said last month, after the code came before the state Board of Education for a vote. "They did not realize that that was already a statute that the state board has been acting on for years and years." Under a 1995 law, the state can suspend professional and recreational licenses, driver's licenses and license plates held by a person who is delinquent by three months or more on court-ordered child support payments. The suspension remains in effect until the delinquent payments are made. Though it may not be well known, the law has been extremely effective in coaxing deadbeats to pay, according to Dan McDonald, administrator of the state Office of Child Support Enforcement. "I would say as a direct enforcement tool, license suspension is our top tool outside of wage assignments," McDonald said. A wage assignment is an order requiring an employer to transfer part of an employee's paycheck to someone else. A review of Office of Child Support Enforcement records for the past two decades showed that although annual collections increased each year, the biggest increase occurred in fiscal year 1996, the year the office began using license suspensions as an enforcement tool. Collections jumped from $72.7 million in fiscal year 1995 to $90 million in fiscal year 1996, a 23.9 percent increase. "When we talk about suspending someone's license, it really gets their attention," McDonald said. The law requires 60 days' notice before a license is suspended. During that 60-day period, a person can avoid suspension by signing an agreement to pay the past-due amount and making an initial payment, usually about 20 percent of the total. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the child support office issued 10,468 notices to suspend driver's licenses. The number of driver's license suspended was 5,481 and the number reinstated was 5,231, or 95 percent of suspensions. The office issued 2,806 notices to suspend professional licenses in the past year. The number suspended was 702 and the number reinstated was 630, or nearly 90 percent. The state also suspended 1,412 vehicle tags, 675 commercial driver's licenses and 1,430 recreational licenses, such as hunting and fishing licenses, because of past-due child support. "It's a great tool, isn't it?" said former state Sen. Jay Bradford, now director of the state Division of Behavioral Health Services. Bradford sponsored the bill that became Act 752 of 1995. Bradford said that as chairman of the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee at the time, he knew unpaid child support was a serious problem and that enforcing support "really makes a big difference to kids and their well-being." A year after Arkansas' law went into effect, Congress, noting the success some states were having with license suspension, passed a federal law directing all states to add license suspension to their child-support enforcement tools. Bradford noted that the state Office of Child Support Enforcement, an office of the state Department of Finance and Administration, has an electronic interface with other agencies that makes it possible for licenses to be suspended or reinstated at the press of a button. "Not only does it help collect the children's support, but it is so quick that we don't have people out there (driving) without a license," he said. There are some exceptions. McDonald said some licenses have remained suspended for years. "It may be that this particular person, we're no longer able to locate them, they've moved to another state and things like that, or they're just working and living underground in a cash society and they're not buying anything on credit and not working for ... employers who want to report them. If they're driving, they're driving illegally," McDonald said. The law does not cover attorney's licenses. Bradford said he left law licenses out of his bill to improve its chances of passing. "Too many lawyers in the Legislature," he said with a laugh. Bradford also laughed when told of the complaints the state Education Department received this year when it included a mention of child support in its proposed code of ethics. That part of the code eventually was deleted. The law may not be well-known because a person who has had a license suspended for non-support is not inclined to talk about it, Bradford said. "You just pay up and hope it's forgotten," he said. ------- On the Net: www.arkansas.gov/dfa/dfa_child_support.html |
