| NCCSO
Hall of Shame:
NORTH DAKOTA
NCCSO Names North Dakota Child Support Agency
To 2005 “Hall of Shame”
It is time again for NCCSO to identify a child support enforcement agency that deserves, in our opinion, to be singled out because of its shameful treatment of custodial parents owed child support. This year’s recipient of the NCCSO “Hall of Shame” is the North Dakota Child Support Enforcement Agency.
What follows are a few statistics that earned this agency its infamous entry into this “Shameful” group of under-performing child support programs. But, it’s not just poor performance that counts: the recipients of the “Hall of Shame” also manage to demean custodial parents while they are in the process of under-performing.
In North Dakota, this demeaning behavior was exhibited by no less than the state’s child support enforcement director and deputy director/legal counsel. While their child support program continues to FAIL in recovering anymore than 10 percent of some of the $152 million in unpaid child support arrears owed to North Dakota families, these two child support agency officials spent countless hours (on taxpayer time) sponsoring and actively LOBBYING for legislation aimed at taking away the rights of these same families to hire private enforcement agencies to help them collect the child support that their state child support agency failed to collect. How unbelievable and shameful!!!
Let’s take a closer look at just a few, BUT CRITICAL, ways in which the North Dakota Child Support Enforcement Agency merited its place in the 2005 Hall of Shame.
CRIPPLING COLLECTION PERFORMANCE
Pity the families owed child support in North Dakota. In addition to North Dakota leaving $137 million in child support arrears uncollected in FY 2003, it under-performs in other areas of child support collections.
With only 38,776 cases, North Dakota is the fourth smallest of all state child support programs. Its total distributed collections were $54,533, 409.
In contrast, New Hampshire, with fewer child support cases (38,015), had distributed collections of $79,516, 774---a collection rate 45.8 percent higher than North Dakota.
Vermont, the nation’s smallest state child support program (with just 24,233 cases) averaged $1,741 collected/disbursed per case --- an amount almost 24% higher than North Dakota (with an average amount collected per case of only $1,406).
INEFFECTIVE “COST EFFECTIVENESS”
The North Dakota child support enforcement agency’s “cost-effectiveness” (the amount of child support collected for each dollar expended by the agency) in FY 2003 was just $4.68.
Another small and neighboring state, South Dakota, had a cost-effectiveness ratio of $7.80 -- a 60% higher rate than North Dakota. The highest cost-effectiveness ratio is in Indiana, which collects $7.91 in child support for each $1 spent by the state’s child support agency.
“DISORDER” IN ESTABLISHING SUPPORT ORDERS
North Dakota’s child support enforcement agency has been sliding in another key service area to custodial parents---that of establishing child support orders. Without a child support order, a family is not even able to get child support.
North Dakota established only 3,548 child support orders in FY 2003 (a decrease from FY 02) and a number that is 60% below that of the state with the smallest caseload, Vermont, which managed to establish 6,128 child support orders.
FALLING FLAT IN RECOUPING STATE WELFARE DOLLARS
North Dakota’s dismal child support record continues in another area that is important to every state’s treasury---the amount of welfare dollars the child support agency is able to recover through child support collections. In fact, this was why the federal government created the child support program in the first place. But even in this performance category, North Dakota is far behind.
In FY 2003, the North Dakota child support enforcement agency managed to collect just a little over $31 million from obligors whose families were or had been receiving welfare.
This amount may seem like a lot, unless you look just south of the North Dakota border to South Dakota. Even though South Dakota overall had fewer total child support collections than North Dakota, it outperformed North Dakota in welfare recovery by collecting more than $41 million in welfare dollars.
New Hampshire, with the same size child support caseload as North Dakota, managed to pull in almost 30% more in welfare recovery ($40.5 million) through its child support enforcement agency than North Dakota’s child support enforcement program.
OUR ADVICE TO NORTH DAKOTA CHILD SUPPORT OFFICIALS
It may help you run a better child support enforcement agency if you would spend less time trying to impose your anti-private child support biases on the clients you are supposed to be trying to help. Why don’t you let parents decide for themselves who can best help them collect their child support? If you want to try to make these sorts of decisions for families in North Dakota, how about running for the legislature? That way, maybe North Dakota would get some child support officials who want to spend their time really trying to help parents collect their child support.
P.S. You also might try working with, rather than against, attorneys or private agencies hired by families your agency wasn’t able to help. Remember, it’s all about the children!
NEW YORK
Legislators who in our opinion deserve special recognition for supporting deadbeat protection laws which limit the options of custodial parents
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