Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Welfare Reform Act Has Tough Changes

from State Sen. Mike Ross

The new federal welfare reform act requires all states to adopt stricter child support enforcement laws.

Arkansas is one of 35 states that has approved the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act. All states must comply with the federal requirements by January 1, 1998.

Actually, the Arkansas legislature was a leader nationwide in strengthening child support laws, enacting a package of bills in 1993 and 1995. In the 1997 session the General Assembly passed Act 1063 to make various technical amendments to make our child support laws conform to national standards.

By making each state's child support laws uniform, enforcement will be more efficient. There should no longer be a need for filing multiple cases in the courts of different states.

There was controversy when the Senate Judiciary Committee considered some of the new child support requirements. Committee members had serious concerns about the proposal that became Act 1163. It requires couples to record their social security numbers on marriage license applications.

The act also requires people to record their social security numbers when they apply for professional and business licenses. Those numbers are then transmitted to the state Office of Child Support Enforcement.

Before approving the bill, the Judiciary Committee worked at length to protect confidentiality, since social security numbers are keys to so much information about people's financial affairs.

The legislature also adopted Act 1276, which creates the Division of State New Hires Registry within the state Employment Security Department. The registry will contain the names of newly hired employees and those who return to work after a layoff or absence, to help enforce child support orders.

Act 1282 clarifies that it is a felony for a person to leave the state for more than 30 days while owing more than $5,000 in child support, if the purpose of leaving the state is to avoid payment. Penalties are more severe for people who leave the state owing $25,000 or more in delinquent child support.

Act 1072 establishes the Arkansas Registry of Child Support Orders, which will include information about child support cases. The registry will provide information about enforcement and compliance with child support orders.

Officials in the welfare system say that for welfare reform to be successful, non-custodial parents who owe child support will have to be more financially responsible. They say that many of the children now on welfare are in poverty, because their non-custodial parents have neglected to maintain them financially.

The package of child support laws is only a part of the state's major overhaul of the welfare system. Strengthened enforcement reflects an overall goal of welfare reform to require greater personal responsibility of people now eligible for assistance.

Other aspects of reform include requiring welfare recipients to stay off drugs, to continue their educations, to take job training, to look for work and to stay on the job if they find work.

The welfare reform law, Act 1058, tries to eliminate the disincentives that discouraged the maintenance of stable, two-parent families. Critics of the old welfare system contend that it did little or nothing to encourage families to stay intact.