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COLUMBUS -- The Ohio Controlling Board released $198,500 Monday to be spent on computerization of child support records, a project in which delays threatened to cost the state $5 million in federal funds.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said earlier this month that Ohio would lose the federal money for missing an Oct. 1 deadline to have a fully operating statewide computer system to track child support cases.
The 1996 federal welfare reform law called for a complete loss of federal child support funds to states that missed the deadline. Data from the state systems are to be shared in a national child support tracking system.
The Ohio Department of Human Services, which is leading the computerization project, is not admitting to missing any deadlines, said Jon Allen, department spokesman. A team of federal officials is in Ohio this week to inspect Ohio's Support Enforcement Tracking System and help resolve the dispute.
The funds released by the state Controlling Board without debate will allow Ohio to contract with Manatron - ATEK Services of Canton to continue with the computerization process.
"I think it's pretty demonstrated that we are serious and we are taking the steps necessary," Mr. Allen said.
Ohio's $100 million computer system, which was mostly paid for with federal funds, has run into delays. Initially, Ohio modeled its system after one in Delaware. But that plan was scrapped when state officials realized Delaware's system would not work in Ohio, a much larger state.
Also contributing to delays were differing child support systems in Ohio's 88 counties. That has forced the state to go county-by-county and write computer programs to convert cases from the counties' existing system to the state system.
By the end of September, Ohio had 101,207 child-support cases converted to the new computer system out of about 1.1 million. Sixteen counties reported having all their cases online, but they do not include any of the large, metropolitan counties.
