Improvements to IL Child Support Collection Showing Big Dividends
According to Ryan Keith of the Illinois State
Journal-Register, the child support collection business in Illinois is
booming. Nearly ten years ago, a new
system of collecting and distributing child support payments caused major
delays that nearly shut down the process, but more recent reforms have made
major headway.
The last five years have seen record amounts of collections,
and in the just-completed budget year, the state collected $1.4 billion.
This fall marks the 10th birthday of the State
Disbursement Unit, a centralized distributor of child support checks that
nearly broke the system. Counties had
been collecting and distributing checks for decades, but a federal order led to
the creation of the SDU.
The base of operations in DuPage County was immediately
swamped with requests. Checks saw delays
numbering weeks, and the process cost millions of dollars to patch back to
usefulness.
A private company, ACS State and Local Solutions, has used
an improved computer system to restore order. Pam Lowry, who runs Illinois' child support enforcement division, says
officials are dedicated to avoiding a repeat of 1999’s mishaps.
Lowry credits a number of factors for the
turnaround in collection rates. Regulations now suspend a person's driver's license and passport if they
do not make the ordered payments. This
has historically been an option, but a law passed in 2007 has made carrying it
out much easier. Bank accounts can be
frozen, as can the issuance of hunting and fishing permits.
The improved computer system allows automatic payments to be
deducted from paychecks issued by employers, removing a step on both the paying
and receiving end.
Nearly 3,100 orders to suspend licenses were issued in 2008,
and by the end of the first half of the current year, that number had nearly
doubled, according to Secretary of State spokesman Henry Haupt. In order to have the suspension lifted,
parents must schedule payment.
According to Lowry, Illinois has collected almost $50
million from restricting driving and hunting licenses
"It's about making the consequences meaningful," she says.
Her office has nearly 880 employees, and an additional 82
still working at the SDU, and Lowry says all work their hardest to hold all
parents accountable even though they work with more than 500,000 families
annually.
She acknowledged that there is
always room for improvement. Even as the
state sees record collection rates, the overall percentage of payments due to
parents that is collected is about 60%.
Lowry says her office is currently focused on getting
parents to sign up for child support sooner, and improving the accuracy of
assistance phone calls while shortening their length. Looming state budget cuts make further
improvements even more challenging.
"One of our goals is to make it harder for people not to pay
their child support than to pay it," she says. "We still have a long way to go."
Source: State
Journal-Register
