Tuesday, October 05, 1999
County looks before it leaps into new system
Feds require tracking of support payments
BY DAN KLEPAL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The state has agreed to pay for a $500,000 study to find out what kind of mess will be made by installation of a computer program to track child support payments.
The federal government has said that all states must convert to a standardized system by October 2000 or face heavy fines.
Some of Ohio's counties, such as Warren, already have converted to the new program and say it has led to one problem after another, from the system crashing regularly to checks being made out in the wrong amount and sent to the wrong address.
In Hamilton County, those problems could be magnified because there are so many more cases. Hamilton County will be just the second metropolitan county in Ohio converted to the Support Enforcement Tracking System (SETS).
“The result of the study will be a plan to fix the gaps in the program,” said Charles Ashmore, policy director for the county's Department of Human Services. “They have to be fixed or we can't do business.”
The idea behind SETS is to allow the federal government to keep tabs on people who fall behind in child support payments. With the standardized program, it will be easier to find a person who owes child support in Ohio but is working in another state.
Hamilton County is scheduled to be fully converted to SETS in February, and local officials have said the new program will mean a degradation of service for the nearly 79,000 cases in the system.
About 9,000 Hamilton County cases had been converted to SETS by the end of September.
The study, which will take three to four months, is a way of trying to identify and solve some of the major problems.
“We're not going to wait for the finished analysis before we start trying to fix the problems,” Mr. Ashmore said. “As we identify problems, we'll try to fix them.”
Jon Allen, a spokesman for Ohio Department of Human Services, said the study also will look at changes the county can make in its business practices to make SETS run better.
“We're doing the study in Hamilton County because it's the next metropolitan county in line,” Mr. Allen said. “And we may be able to learn something that will help us with conversion in Cuyahoga and Franklin counties.”
Hamilton County DHS Director Don Thomas said the deadline for the county's conversion to SETS might be delayed if enough problems are identified.
“There is a history here of deadlines which have slid,” Mr. Thomas said.
County officials have said that they will delay the implementation of SETS if the bugs aren't worked out of the system. Ohio paid $10 million in fines for missing the October 1999 deadline, and will face an additional $18 million fine if the program isn't installed statewide by next October.
“October 2000 is the state's intent, but it may not be Hamilton County's intent,” Mr. Ashmore said. “We'll be looking out for our residents first.
“If we can assure them there will be a smooth transition, we won't have to throw up any roadblocks.”
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