PARENT'S RIGHTS NOW!

South Carolina will spend $25 million on a computer database to record and track down deadbeat parents after being hit with more than $42 million in federal fines since 2001 for failing to implement such a system.

The state Budget and Control Board on Tuesday approved the move, which will allow state and county governments to work together in collecting money from parents who are delinquent in their child support payments. The state will continue to pay the fines until the system is in place.

"We at DSS will have a partnership with the 46 clerks of courts for enforcing child support payments," said Larry McKeown, director of the child support enforcement division at the state Department of Social Services. "Rather than having to go to another county, they can access the information from anywhere."

Today, DSS and each of the state's 46 counties have their own computer systems. The new system will improve communication between DSS and county clerks of court.

"For example," McKeown said, "if we find a person and input them into our system, Charleston County can quit looking for them."

South Carolina parents owe more than $700 million in back child-support payments, with more than 70,000 people in the state dodging payments each year.

DSS had 17,446 active cases of non-custodial parents owing child support in 2004 for Charleston County. The department also had 6,517 active cases for Berkeley County and 3,681 active cases for Dorchester County last year.

DSS collected more than $247 million in payments last year. More than $35 million of that came from Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties.

"The system will allow us to monitor and remediate delinquent accounts more rapidly," McKeown said. "Quicker response to a missed payment will accelerate efforts to get the non-custodial parent paying again."

South Carolina and California are the only states out of compliance with tracking deadbeat parents through a computer database. South Carolina tried to build a $43 million system in 1994, but the private contractor hired to do the work didn't create it. The state sued the contractor, getting back $17 million.

The Budget and Control Board on Tuesday authorized a 10-year contract for the database, with South Carolina paying about $25 million and the federal government picking up the rest of the more than $100 million cost, according to Michael Sponhour, spokesman for the Budget and Control Board.

Gov. Mark Sanford has proposed using $11.5 million from the state's capital reserve fund to pay some of the cost.

One of the more effective ways of getting child-support payments is by withholding wages, a method that should work even more efficiently with the new system, McKeown said.

"With a statewide system," McKeown said, "DSS will enter the data and when it matches a case anywhere in the state, the automated system will generate a wage withholding notice to the employer the same day."